An Alphabet of Ills
by EvelynCarver
Summary: A series of short stories that cover the continuing adventures of Rose Tyler and the Doctor as they battle various health problems on alien worlds and deal with injures and sickness of all sorts. One chapter for every letter of the alphabet!
1. Allergies

**Fic: alphabet part 1**

**Tags: **hurt/comfort, rose tyler, doctor who, tenth doctor, alphabet of ills, allergies

**A ** is for Allergies

**Title: **A is for Allergies (1/26)

**Author: **EvelynCarver

**Rating: **PG (K)

**Summary: **The Doctor loves chips, but sometimes chips don't love Rose, at least, that's what her stomach has been communicating.

**Disclaimer: **Doctor Who & associated. does not belong to me.

"This is awesome." Rose Tyler smiled at the man sitting on the other side of the café table as if they hadn't spent the day dashing in and out of a jail and running for their lives. It had also been 200 years ago and on a different planet. But now it was gone and they were having a meal. She'd lost track of what ever meal it was, but it was good.

The Doctor was a bit more intent on his chips that he was to Rose. He hadn't been in the mood to go back to Earth, so they were on one of the colonies from the five billion time period. After all, humans carried the same traditions and food with them and then he got to show Rose yet another world, where maybe, this time, they would have a quiet meal and meander back to the TARDIS, rather than dash for their lives.

Rose was finishing up her plate of chips, they lost their crispiness and delightfulness a few pieces in and she was ready to head back. "Doctor, do want these?" She motioned to her plate, "I'm finished." She wanted to ask to go back, so she could rest a bit and get some sleep. It had been a long day, or maybe even two days.

"Hmm." The Doctor continued to slowly eat his chips, taking some off of her plate every few bites. He licked his lips and sucked some of the salt off his thumb before gathering up their plates and depositing in the box behind their table.

"Right then Rose. Shall we go?"

She couldn't have stood up faster. Rose smiled and pulled her sweater on, heading towards the door, walking just a bit faster than the Doctor, hoping he'd catch on and hurry up a bit. But he remained clueless to her want for speed and they walked back to the TARDIS, him pointing out all the little bits and trinkets and her being non-committal and trying to hurry things along.

It was all Rose could do to stop herself from breathing a sigh of relief when the familiar blue box came into sight. Still, she waited it out until the Doctor locked the door behind them and hung up his coat and stopped at the door out of the console room. "Rose, I'm going to the kitchen, you want anything?"

Rose shook her head and climbed the stairs to the door. "Nah, I'm going to bed, it's late you know." She yawned and gave her head a shake to clear the cobwebs that were cluttering her brain again. "I'll see you in the morning."

The Doctor nodded and turned left, heading down the corridor. Rose turned right, hoping her room was in the same place that it had been last time she'd gone there. Everything just kept moving around and she was a bit too tired to go searching for her bed.

But for whatever reason the TARDIS was being friendly and her room was just where she remembered leaving it last and her bed looked just as comfortable and welcoming as it always had after a long day. It didn't take her long to shuck off her clothes and pull on shorts and a tank top before turning off the lights and climbing into her bed.

And then she lay there, waiting to sleep, for the exhaustion to really and actually catch up with her for once and for all. It wasn't happening. She closed her eyes and breathed slowly and deeply through her nose, thinking about sheep and then trying not to think about anything. Rose tossed and turned, lying on her side, balling up her pillow and rearranging her blankets twice. She turned over onto her stomach.

Rose gasped and rolled over, sitting up and clutching her stomach with both hands in an instant. The sudden and painful throbbing had taken her by surprise and she took a few deep breathes, getting everything back under control. She pulled up her tank top, slowly; somehow the fabric seemed to help the pain.

There was nothing on her skin. No bruises, no quills or rashes, just absolutely nothing. She eased herself off her bed and walked across the room to her bathroom, sitting on the edge of the tub, waiting for the pain to decline give her a moment's respite. But as the pain began to recede, her stomach cramped and she felt bile rising in her throat.

Glad that she was already in the bathroom; Rose leaned over the toilet, clutching the porcelain base with both hands and holding on for dear life. The vomiting passed and she leaned back, breathing heavily and tasting stomach acid and something spoiled in her mouth.

The sink was there and she cupped her hands and swallowed a mouthful of water before bending back over the toilet as her stomach tried to reject itself from her body once again. It ended just as suddenly as it had begun and Rose was left half hanging in the toilet breathing heavily. She spit and closed the lid before flushing it all away.

It took her longer than she would have liked to stand up again. Rose leaned against the sink and washed her hands before cupping some more water up and bringing it to her mouth. It stung her throat going done, but it was sweet as anything she'd ever had. She took a few more swallows before lowering her body back down to the floor.

Her stomach tightened and cramped and Rose curled into a ball on the tile floor as she waited for it all to pass. For once she actually wished that she was still at home, in the Powell Estates working in a shop and living with her mother. Then this would be easier. Her mum would know what to do, and her mum would know that she was sick. She always did.

Rose didn't realise that she'd never turned the lights on until the walls slowly started to glow. That she was used to, the Doctor had explained it once. Something about mimicking the circadian rhythms of Earth days and sun patterns to make it easier for humans to eat and sleep and function. But that would mean that she'd been in the bathroom, vomiting and sitting on the toilet in stages, the entire night. She couldn't remember what time it had been when she'd laid down the night before, but she didn't know what time it was now either.

She willed the time away, waiting for her stomach to settle and for her throat to stop stinging and burning after each swallow of water. The glow grew around her and it seemed like only minutes ago she'd been in darkness. And the light, it meant that it was breakfast time.

Rose chose not to meet the Doctor for breakfast in the kitchen that morning. And the lack of movement from the TARDIS indicated that he hadn't brought them somewhere else to enjoy a native breakfast. Rose still wasn't sure what to think of the man. He was always different and he scared and fascinated her in equal parts. Still, she wanted her mum and to be left alone, she didn't need him begging her to go off on one of his harebrained adventures today.

The quiet tap on the door of her room didn't carry through the closed door of the bathroom and Rose had her eyes closed and was resting her head on the cool tile floor. She couldn't remember when she'd gone from having a stomach ache to her body feeling like it was going to explode and her head crushing her brain.

Even the not-so-quiet tap of the Doctor's knuckles on the door of her room didn't catch her attention. Rose was too busy breathing deeply through her nose, trying to stop the catch in her throat from turning into another bout of vomiting. Her stomach was empty and all she brought up was bile, but she still didn't feel right. She was still throwing up; mostly whatever water she managed to swallow, but sometimes chunks of what she imagined to be her stomach.

The Doctor opened the door to Rose's room as quietly as he could, his eyes scanned her bed, hoping that his friend was simply sleeping deeply and hadn't heard him. Images flashed through his head, Rose had been exhausted, she'd slipped and fallen in the bath or she'd done something incredibly stupid and was lost somewhere inside the TARDIS, or worse, she'd left the TARDIS for some reason and was wondering the Human colony. There were worse places for her to be on her own, but that didn't calm his mind.

Rose raised her head up off the tile floor, for a moment she'd thought that she'd heard footsteps, someone out in her room. But it wouldn't be her mum and the Doctor never came into her room, as far as she knew. She sighed and put her head back on the floor, wishing that her headache had calmed just a little bit.

A sigh caught the Doctor's sensitive hearing. He crossed Rose's floor in quick strides and knocked on the door to the bathroom, not trying to be quiet this time. If she was there, he wanted to talk to her and see her, alive and well. "Rose, are you in there? I've been looking for you." The Doctor let his hand fall back to his side as he waited for her response.

With a mental rant about Time Lords and spaceships in her head, Rose slowly sat up and then got to her feet. "I'm all right Doctor. Be out in a minute." Rose glanced at her appearance in the mirror and shuddered. She looked like death warmed over, pale with dark circles around her eyes and some of her hair was dry and crusty with vomit that didn't quite make it into the toilet bowl.

Rose turned the handle on the sink and stuck her face under the stream of cold water. She shook her head vigorously, regretting it seconds later as the pounding in her head worsened and scrubbing the old makeup and tiredness off her face with a towel. She looked plain and ill, but it was mostly the lack of makeup, at least, that was what she was telling herself.

The Doctor stepped back as Rose opened the door and stepped out into the full light of her bedroom. He looked at her and then glanced up and down her body, wondering how much blood she would have had to have lost to become that pale and frail after the vitality she'd had the night before.

"Rose, are you all right? You look a bit, like a corpse." The Doctor looked at her face again, the pain in her eyes and the tense muscles in her neck and shoulders. If it wasn't for the fact that she was standing, he might have thought that she was dead.

Rose nodded, not trusting her voice for a moment. "Just a bit tired still." She gasped as the words came out, as not much more than a whisper. Her throat was raw and the words aggravated it and her hand flew to her throat, massaging the outside, as if that would soothe the pain on the inside. Her eyes moved to the Doctor, wondering if he'd believe her.

One glance told her that there was no chance of that.

The Doctor helped her to her bed and he sat next to her, one of his cool hands finding her wrist and gripping it, the other snaked around her shoulders and came to rest on her fore head. Rose sighed, this time in release, in giving up and let him touch her.

It wasn't so different, she'd been injured before and he'd always been polite and professional. Different from his usual energetic self, sometimes Rose thought that he might have actually been a doctor, a proper doctor at some point.

"Right then." The Doctor released her wrist, but kept his arm around her shoulders. "Come on then, let's get you sorted out."

Rose staggered to her feet; it was still hard to move around, every step since pain shooting through her stomach and her head. "Where are we going?" She mumbled, whenever she got hurt he could help her out just fine in the console room and once in the kitchen when she sliced into her thumb cutting vegetables.

"Just walk Rose, we'll be there in a moment, and the TARDIS isn't going to make you go far." He guided her out of her room and into the hall and then right into the room next door.

The walls were harsh white and her eyes took a moment to refocus and she wasn't turning her head to look around, still, it looked like a proper doctor's office, or a hospital. For a moment Rose felt frozen, she felt awful, but she'd never really considered that there was something really wrong with her; it was just a stomach bug, or the flu. Something like that. She hadn't been to a doctor in ages and this was beginning to make her feel nervous.

The Doctor helped her into the room and onto the examination couch at the centre of the room. He said something that she didn't catch and stepped over to the counters.

Rose looked at her legs dangling over the edge of the couch and up at the Doctor. Maybe he really was a doctor; maybe he'd forget about this and just bring her home. But nope, he was stepping back to her side, a plethora of instruments in his hands. Her vision was a bit blurry, but she would've sworn that he looked concerned and she'd never seen that expression on his face before.

She waited as he ran a few devices over her body, pausing a moment at her stomach, her head and her throat. Some of them whirred and others beeped, it seemed to Rose that this was much better than anytime she'd been to see a doctor before. He was quiet and considerate and he didn't insist on touching the bits of her that hurt.

Finally he coaxed one arm off her stomach and showed her a small silver tube that vaguely resembled a syringe, just without the needle. He held it to her arm and when pulled it away a moment later Rose was surprised to see the bead of blood on her arm, but the Doctor wiped it away with a small cool cloth and the skin on her arm was as unblemished and unbroken as it had been before he'd taken his sample.

"Just a minute now." He said softly, placing a hand on her shoulder for the briefest second before moving to one of the larger machines on the side and emptying the blood sample into the receiving tray. Rose watched as he put on his glasses to examine the readout, it was in the same odd swirly characters that he had on the readouts in the console room.

When the machine`s screen stopped sending out symbols, the Doctor gripped the counter with both hands for a second before hurrying around the room and returning to her side with another armload of devices and things that she didn`t she`d be able to identify even if her eyes weren`t clouded and aching.

Rose took the pills he offered her and at his demand finished off the liquid he gave her to swallow them with. It wasn`t water or milk, but it was thick and sweet and tangy, and it coated her throat as it made its way into her stomach and unlike the water she`d drank earlier, this didn`t feel at all like it was going to come back up.

He offered her a hot water bottle for her stomach and she slid it between onto her shirt and under her folded arms, amazed at the difference the heat was making, especially with the drugs kicking in and she could just feel the tension and pain leeching out of her body. Her next breath didn`t pull at the muscles in her torso and she slid off the examination couch.

The Doctor took her hand and glanced at her face for a moment, "Come on, we'll get you back in bed and I'll dig up something for you to eat. Anything you want?"

Rose shook her head; she was feeling better, but not that much better. Her stomach still churned and the thought of food was not a particularly good one.

Once she was comfortably situated back in bed. The Doctor had insisted on taking her hot water bottle and refilling it in the bathroom sink. He presented it to her and fussed with the blankets on her bed for a moment, as if he wasn't quite ready to leave yet.

"Doctor, I'm all right now. I feel fine. You can go." Rose said, intending to sound comforting and thankful for what he'd done and that he could get back to doing the things that he wanted now, instead it came out a bit harsher than that and her tone made it sound as if she was ordering him to leave. She instantly regretted her words.

He looked at her for a moment, his face crestfallen and his eyes sad before nodding and walking out the door of her bedroom, pulling it mostly shut behind him, almost glancing at her over his shoulder as he left the room.

Rose slid down on her bed, staring at the ceiling as she waited for the pain to return or for her mind to release her from guilt and let her slip into a blissful and restful sleep.

The next thought that crossed her mind was that it wasn't dark and hadn't it been dark when she'd gone to sleep? Rose propped herself up on her elbows. Across the room, on the comfy chair that she usually used to pile her dirty laundry on, the Doctor sat, staring at her, his fingers steepled in front of his chest.

"I'm sorry."

Rose wasn't sure which of them started first, but they both finished around the same time, him looking directly at her and she lowering her eyes, ashamed at her earlier behaviour.

The Doctor waited a moment before continuing. "It's my fault you got sick. I wasn't thinking and that planet that I took you for chips, those chips weren't normal. They're made with special ingredients native to the planet, something in the salt and I didn't think about exposing a 21st century human to a compound like that. And then I didn't even realise you were ill. I'm so sorry."

"No, I'm the one who is sorry." Rose sat up, and pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. "I was horrid to you and all you ever want to do is help. Please forgive me for the stupid things I said last night. I really didn't mean it."

The Doctor got off his chair and walked slowly across the floor to sit down at the foot of her bed. "Fine then, let's move on and where do you want to go next?" The serious expression was off his face and replaced with his usual brilliant smile.

Rose groaned. "One more day off, either that or a beach resort, or a shopping centre. But not one of the ones that has a plastic people as manikins, I've seen enough of those to last me a lifetime." She grinned as the Doctor got to his feet and winked to her as he crossed the threshold to her room.

"Console room in 5 minutes."

Rose was already moving towards the shower when she called back over her shoulder, "Going to need at least 20."

END


	2. Blood Loss

**Title: **B is for Blood Loss (2/26)

**Author: **EvelynCarver

**Rating: **T

**Summary: **A jungle expedition gets bloody when Rose is injured. Comfort fluff.

**Length: **1685

**Disclaimer: **Doctor Who & associated. does not belong to me.

**Notes: **

His hands were covered in blood, they slipped as he tried to tighten them onto Rose, but the slick liquid prevented him from getting a good grip on anything, including his sonic screwdriver. And as much as he was loath to admit it, this was one situation where his sonic screwdriver just wasn't going to be enough.

"Please Rose, just hang on a little longer." He wasn't sure if he was saying half the words that came into his head, but from the way that her head turned towards them, he smoothed her hair back from her face and stroked her cheek. "It'll be all right."

The Doctor quickly wiped his hands down the sides of his pants and then scooped her into his arms, her head lolling back and her neck at an unnatural angle. Quickly, but carefully he made his way through the thicket of trees, placing his feet cautiously, ever worried of jarring Rose or of slipping and hurting himself and worse, leaving her without aid.

Once they cleared the forest he stopped and set her down on the grass in front of him. The TARDIS was still two fields and a hill away from them, but it was closer now and he could sense it close to him and if it wasn't for the hill, he'd been able to see her there.

The blood on his hands was dry enough now to pull the sonic screwdriver out of his pocket and manipulate its settings. He pulled off his jacket and turned his screwdriver on, sliding it up and down the fabric as it parted the threads and cut it into long strips.

He tied the bands above and below her spurting injury and fastened another wad of bandages around the actual wound in her arm, trying not to think about the bacteria he was forcing into her bloodstream at that moment and more about the good it would do her to have blood inside her body, rather than spilling onto the ground.

The Doctor scooped her back into his arms and continued his trek towards the TARDIS. He didn't dare move it remotely, not here, the entire planet was more dangerous than he'd originally estimated and he was growing wary of what else could be lurking in the underbrush or following them out of the forest.

By the time he reached the door of the TARDIS he was nearly sprinting. With every step he'd taken, it felt as if he could feel her life slipping away and there was nothing that he could do out there. There was nothing that would stop her from dying and him being solely responsible for her fate. She hadn't ever wandered off; her condition was no one's fault but his.

The door opened to his touch and he ran through the console room, the door leading to the interior of the TARDIS opened directly into the sickbay. He placed her gently on the examination couch in the centre of the room and let out a sigh of relief as the stasis field activated and the shining crystals covered her body.

The Doctor threw open the drawer closest to him, relieved to find that the TARDIS was still doing everything she could to help him. He pulled out the IV equipment and rehydration mixtures, fumbling and nearly dropping his scanners and typer as he hurried to Rose's side.

With the stasis field maintaining the condition of Rose's body until medical treatment could be initiated, time was no longer against him and he worked quickly but unhurriedly, being careful and taking the extra moments to wipe the wet blood from her face and shoulders.

He pricked her finger and put the drop of blood in the typer, attaching it to the synthesiser to produce blood to replace what she had lost. Doubling checking to make sure that the stasis field wasn't going to give out on him, the Doctor unwound the bits of his suit jacket that had made the improvised tourniquet and then took off the wad he'd applied directly to the injury before moving in with his scanner.

Frowning, he adjusted a few settings and scanned her again. With the injury well defined in his mind, he cleaned out the puncture wound and added sub-dermal sealant to the cut, pressing together the muscle and tissues beneath her skin before closing her skin and disinfecting her new skin and covering the thin line with a piece of self-adhesive gauze.

As he was putting away his equipment, the machine processing Rose's blood dinged and a bag of whole blood dropped into the metal tray. The Doctor turned the stasis field off and set up the IV in Rose's arm, trying not to look at the dirt and blood still on most of her skin.

Once the antibiotics and whole blood was dripping into her system, he let himself have a moment to rest. There was a biohazard shower in the sickbay and he stepped behind the glass and cleaned the blood and dirt from his body the best that he could in two minutes before hurrying back to Rose's side, dressed in dirty clothes; he wasn't going to leave her just to get changed.

Rose slept deeply as he cleaned the muck from her skin gently with a warm cloth and smoothed her hair back and into a braid and laid it down beside her, hoping that she'd feel better when she woke up. He wanted to get her into some clean clothes, but he just didn't feel comfortable enough to leave her, or to undress her, not like this, without her permission.

The lights dimmed a bit when he sat in the armchair in the corner of the sickbay and drew his knees up onto the seat, eventually allowing his eyes to drift closed and he waited, in a half sleeping, half waking stage for Rose to need another bag of blood or another dose of antibiotics.

Neither of those things was what brought him back to full wakefulness. The lights remained dim, but in the quiet of the sickbay, his ears caught the sounds changes as Rose's breathing changed from the slow and even breaths of someone in a deep sleep to the shallower ones of someone suddenly in pain that they weren't experiencing before.

In a split second he was on his feet and leaning over her, smoothing back the hair around her face. "IT's all right Rose. You're in the TARDIS now and you're going to be fine. Just give it a few more minutes and I swear it will be better."

He stepped away from her for a moment to adjust the amount of her analgesics. But he was back in a second, holding her hand and running his thumb across the back of it. The Doctor wanted to say something else, something that she would find comforting, but he'd never really been good at that part. There was a reason that he left when the crisis was over. He wasn't very good at picking up the pieces.

But despite his futuristic drugs, soft touches, and medical tech, Rose remained groggy and half-aware of what was going on around her. As her eyes began to drift closed again, he stroked her hair back and promised that he'd been there when she woke up again and that she'd be feeling much better the next time she opened her eyes.

The Doctor waited. He wasn't very good at waiting and considering that it only took Rose another five solid hours of sleep to feel well enough to come back to wakefulness, he was surprised at how much his mind managed to wander. From recalibrating half his old medical equipment so that it would interface with the new, to playing games with the sonic screwdriver, to checking and then rechecking all of Rose's medications, he quickly ran out of things to do in the sickbay. But he had promised Rose that he would be there when she woke up and he wanted to fulfil that promise, even if it made him bored.

When Rose opened her eyes for the second time, he was right there next to her, with a bottle of water and straw. There wasn't any food, mostly because he hadn't been willing to walk to the kitchen. But he helped her sit up on the pillows piled behind her and handed her the water.

"How are you feeling Rose?" He smiled, reassuring himself with a glance at the monitors next to the bed, tracking her body's every movement and fluctuation.

Rose shrugged, looking at the two cannulas in her arm and then wishing that she hadn't noticed them. It was easier to feel better if she could pretend that she wasn't recovering and that this was just another day on the TARDIS, with her Doctor.

They waited in silence, Rose sipped at the water the Doctor had given her, and the Doctor watched as the last few drops of synthesised blood dripped down the tube and into Rose's arm, adding to her depleted blood supply. This was the last bag of blood and now that she was awake he could change her antibiotics to oral form and remove her from the monitors and the sickbay altogether.

It could have been worse, he reminded himself as he went through the words and motions of unhooking and peeling the monitors off of his companion. Rose was fine, he was fine and what might have happened hadn't happened and it wouldn't do him well to dwell on that.

"Come on Rose. We'll get you back to your room. You can take a shower and we'll have a picnic breakfast in your room. And then we'll be off, wherever you want to go." He smiled tightly, a bit more forced than he'd hoped for.

Rose came off the examination couch slowly, moving stiffly as she did. But she took his offered hand and let him help her down the corridor, breathing slowly and relaxing with every step that she took. She was safe now, here in the TARDIS, with her Doctor.


	3. Cuddling

**Title: **C is for Cuddling(3/26)

**Author: **EvelynCarver

**Rating: **T

**Summary: **Post-Father's Day. Rose really needs some comfort. The Doctor obliges.

**Length: **1141

**Disclaimer: **Doctor Who & associated. does not belong to me.

**Notes: **Not really any hurt here, just comfort.

Rose dug her teeth more firmly into her cheek, determined not to show any weakness with the Doctor still around her. She could hear his scathing Northern tones in her head already and she was just waiting for the castigation that she knew was coming.

Once the Doctor had moved the TARDIS into the vortex and settled over the console playing with some combination of wires and what looked like tentacles, Rose opened the door to the interior and didn't turn back.

"Want anything?" She called out, a noncommittal grunt the only reply, she breathed a sigh of relief and shut the door behind her. The last time she'd tried to leave the console room the Doctor had barked out that she wasn't to leave unless she had to and then she'd had to come right back. So after she went and washed her face and got a drink of water, she'd had to wait an agonisingly long and awkward hour until he'd stopped the travel of the TARDIS and she'd built up the strength to try and leave again.

No more than ten minutes later she was in her room, a cup of tea on her dresser, the lights dimmed, and now she was wishing she'd had the forethought to grab the box of tissues that sat on the counter next to her sink.

Rose had never felt more alone. The TARDIS, which usually felt warm and comfortable around her, felt dark and alien. The light that seemed to shine from the walls in her room was muted and almost non-existent in the various corridors.

The emotion overwhelmed her and she pulled her knees up and let her head slump down against them. Heaving sops racked her body and she could feel herself shaking as her body bounced against the walls of corner that she'd crouched in. Somehow her bed had made her feel worse; she didn't deserve that much comfort right now.

Eventually the passion and energy with which the hurt had originally ceased her left her body, sapping her energy as it went. Once she'd been still for long enough, the lights went off completely and she curled up in her corner, wrapping the blanket she'd pulled off her bed around herself securely.

Rose sighed and tried to breathe slowly and deeply, telling herself to relax and go off to sleep. Sleeping would help, after she'd left Jimmy Stone and come home, she'd slept for hours and hours every day until she'd finally gotten up and gotten a job at her mum's insistence.

Today it just wasn't working. Every time she closed her eyes she opened them a second later, worried that the world would have disappeared around her, with things eating everything and stopping what wasn't supposed to happen. She'd changed things and maybe she'd made it better and she wouldn't trade the hours with her father for anything, but it hurt so much now.

She spent the night crying and sitting silently in equal measures, waiting for time to pass and the pain of life to dull back to its usual levels. When the clock on her bedside table read seven, she got up, showered, dressed and up her makeup on, taking care around her puffy eyes, there wasn't much that she could do to make them look normal, but it was a start.

The TARDIS kitchen was dark and quiet. The light turned on as she went into the room and Rose assembled her breakfast things, putting the kettle on and putting the bagels into the toaster. Usually the Doctor was already in the kitchen by the time she got up, but if he followed his usual pattern, she wasn't going to see him for at least another hour.

But when Rose turned back from removing the hot bagels from the toaster, the Doctor was standing next to the kettle with their usual morning mugs. Rose was startled, but covered it by stepping closer to the toaster and ignoring the Doctor as she spread the bagels with peanut butter and set them on the table.

She ignored the Doctor, thanking him when he handed her a mug of tea, but pretending he didn't exist beyond that. She left him sitting in the kitchen as soon as her own food was eaten and turned back to her room.

The day continued much the same way. Rose walked around the TARDIS like a ghost, ignoring the Doctor whenever their paths happened to cross. She spent most of the day in her room, leaving to get lunch and supper and one journey to the library for something to read.

As soon as she could justify it was late enough to go to sleep, Rose changed back into her pyjamas and sat back down in her corner, wrapping the blanket around her and burying her head under it, sobbing quietly as she thought of everything that had happened and how long it was going to take the Doctor to kick her off the TARDIS. She hoped that he'd at least bring her home first, not that she deserved any favours.

When her clock read ten, the door to her room opened and the Doctor stepped inside.

Rose felt her breath catch in her throat and looked at him. She was expecting to get thrown out, just not now, it was night time and she was sitting down and she didn't want to back her things up and leave now and forever. Another sob rose in her throat.

The Doctor crouched down next to her and put an arm around her shoulders. "Shh, Rose, why are you sitting on the floor?"

Rose started to laugh at his comment but it came out more like a choked up sob.

"Oh Rose." The Doctor pulled her to her feet and grabbed her blanket as it slid to the floor. He guided her over to her bed and sat on the edge of the mattress, pulling her down next to him. She leaned into his shoulder, watching as he kicked off his shoes and pulled his legs up onto the bed, crossing them in front of him.

One of his hands went to her head and began to stroke her hair, she curled up on the bed next to him, eventually following his coaxing and putting her head in his lap, her silent tears soaking the leg of his jeans. But he didn't say anything, just pulled the blanket over her and kept gently stroking her hair.

Rose felt her eyes slide closed, her father's face hovered in her mind for a moment before the memory enveloping her. She could feel gentle hands, on her shoulder and in her hair and for a second, just a second, those hands didn't belong to a 900 year old Time Lord, they belonged to her dad.


	4. Dehydration

**Title: **D is for Dehydration(4/26)

**Author: **EvelynCarver

**Rating: **T

**Summary: **The desert is not a good place to spend 2 days marooned, especially when the alien sun never sets above you.

**Length:** 1879

**Disclaimer: **Doctor Who & associated. does not belong to me.

At first Rose thought she was imagining it. There had been so many times during her marooning that the sound of the TARDIS had appeared. But the air in front of her was shimmering and she was certain that it wasn't a mirage this time. Rose raised a hand to the blue box that was slowly materializing in front of her. It had been days since she'd seen anything but sand and sunlight.

The door to the TARDIS swung inwards and the Doctor leaned out. "Hello Rose, took me a bit longer than it should have, but I'm back now." He smiled at her and slowly his smile twisted as he watched her and took in her disheveled appearance and her new posture of half lying on the ground. "Are you okay Rose?"

Her throat was too dry to speak, so Rose smiled through her dry and cracked lips and nodded minutely, trying not to aggravate her ferocious headache.

The Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS and slipped an arm around her, helping her to her feet and the two steps into the ship and out of the raging sunlight. He helped her to the jump seat and produced a plastic water bottle from one of the immense pockets in his jacket. With a glance at her, he twisted the top off for her and then handed over the bottle. "Go ahead, you must be thirsty."

Rose downed the entire bottle, sloshing about half of it down her front as her hands shook too much to keep it steady. "Thanks." She rasped, her voice only slightly recovered. She tried to hand the bottle back to him, but he set it on the floor and handed her a second one.

She took the second bottle more slowly, sipping at it and concentrating on not spilling so much of the water down her front, although the cool water had felt amazing on her sunburned skin. When she'd finished that bottle, the Doctor helped her off the jump seat and took her arm to guide her into the back of the TARDIS.

The Doctor opened the door to her room for her and had the TARDIS keep the lights on low and the air conditioning to high. He sat her on her bed and dug around in her piles of clothing for something resembling pyjamas, but by the time he'd found sweatpants and a t-shirt that looked more relaxed, Rose had curled up on top of her covers and was fast asleep. The Doctor smiled at her slumbering form before he remembered that her current condition was due entirely to his miscalculations.

The next time Rose opened her eyes; she was freezing and burning in equal measure. Her head was pounding and every muscle in her body ached. She slowly pulled herself upright to discover that she was lying on top of her bed, still dressed in the dirty rags she'd been wearing on that desert planet. It took her immense effort to get off the bed and stand on shaky legs. Somehow she managed to get across the room and through the door and she was even able to slowly lower herself to the floor in front of the toilet before the bile she'd felt rising had finally come to the surface.

Rose coughed and spluttered in front of the toilet, the force of her vomiting caused the aching across her stomach to intensify and the room started to spin around her. She groaned, her throat protesting the movement and closed her eyes, leaning against the tub and clasping her head in her hands. She took slow breaths, willing herself to keep her stomach contents where they belonged and concentrating on anything but the room spinning around her and her pounding head. She stood up, leaning on the wall as she walked along and back into her bedroom.

Here Rose stepped away from the wall and managed three faltering steps before she sank to the floor, shaking and shivering as the room spun lazily around her. A few deep breaths later she'd found the energy to get onto her hands and knees and slowly crawl towards the door. Rose knew that any other time she would have been humiliated to having been reduced to crawling along the floor, desperately trying to reach the door to the interior of the TARDIS, today she was just glad that she had been able to find the energy to crawl.

The door went from being miles away from her to being just outside the grasp of her fingertips. Rose lied down on her the floor of her room and waited for the room to stop spinning. Once things seemed more stable she hauled herself up against the door and turned the knob, falling out into the hall, too weak to break her fall this time.

"Doctor," She rasped out quietly as she crumpled to the floor in a heap.

The first thing that Rose noticed as that she wasn't thirsty anymore, but her mouth was incredibly dry. She'd gotten used to the burning and gnawing thirst that had become ever present and now it was gone. The second thing that Rose noticed was that she wasn't cold or hot anymore. She wasn't shivering or burning, she was comfortable in a way that she could hardly remember feeling.

She tried to sit up slowly, she wasn't going to rush anything, but a second later there was a gently pressure on one of her shoulders, that's when Rose turned her head and realised that even though her eyes were open, she couldn't see a thing.

"Let me go!" Rose pulled away from the touch on her shoulder and gasped as something pulled in her hand and pain shot through her arm. "Who are you? Doctor!" She called, hoping that the Time Lord was close enough to hear her and rescue her from her captors.

The touch on her shoulder disappeared. "Rose, this is the Doctor, you're in the TARDIS. Everything is all right, please calm down before you hurt yourself again."

Rose wanted to believe the soft voice, it sounded like the Doctor and she did feel better, not tortured or experimented on. "I can't see. The Doctor would never not let me see him. You're not the Doctor."

There was a soft sigh and Rose felt hands on either side of her face. "Rose, please believe me, at least for the amount of time it will take me to get these off of you. They should have had time to work by now."

Rose nodded slowly, not trusting the hands touching her head. A second later a cool touch around her eye socket replaced the hands and some kind of gel was rubbed into her skin, skin that seemed to be over top of her eyes. The skin was peeled away and she blinked, the Doctor coming into focus in front of her.

There were two pieces of what looked like skin in his hands. "Oh these, rehydration patches. Your eyes are full of vitrious fluid and your supplies were a bit depleted, I was just topping them up a bit." He grinned at her before disposing of the patches and returning to her side. "Give me your arm, I'll clean it up."

Rose remembered the pain she'd felt in her arm and looked down to see that her hand was covered in blood, leaking out around where an IV port had been and was still taped to her hand, dripping fluid that mixed with her blood and poured off her fingers and onto the white sheets that covered her. She offered the Doctor her hand, feeling the tape pull at her skin as she moved further away from the drip bag.

"Sorry about that, I'll have to start this again." The Doctor glanced at her face critically, "you're still a bit more dehydrated than I'd like you to be." Rose waited as he wiped the blood off her hand and cleaned the wound with a tiny cloth that left perfectly healed, unblemished skin in its wake. He got up and returned with another butterfly needle and bent over her hand again, "Might feel a little pinch here, sorry."

Rose watched and waited, and soon he gave her back her hand with the IV taped down and continuing to administer the mix of whatever it was to combat her dehydration.

"What happened?" Rose asked, lifting her eyes to his face, only vaguely surprised to see his guilty expression, she knew that he took these things hard, harder than he should have, because she was going to be fine.

The Doctor sat on the bed near her feet and began to gently stroke a patch of skin just above her ankle. "It's my fault entirely, I only meant for you to wait for me for an hour at the most. I was gone was for 32 hours Rose. I don't know how I made the mistake. It was only an hour, maybe two for me. But I steered the TARDIS back wrong and you suffered, I'm so sorry."

Rose nodded, she'd figured that much out herself in the desert after the Doctor still hadn't returned and she'd appreciated the sand and the sky and the one cactus-like plant that she'd been able to see.

"But what happened to me Doctor? I don't remember feeling that bad when I first got back. I felt better, I got sick later, and that's not your fault."

The Doctor just shook his head. "I should have noticed immediately. You didn't, you'd probably been feeling dehydrated for almost a day and then I gave you water and you would have felt better, but only in the short term. You needed replacement fluids and electrolytes. Two water bottles wasn't going to do it."

Rose sat up and put her hand not attached to the IV over the Doctor's. "It's going to be okay, right?" When he nodded, she continued, "So then you can relax and think of some waterpark or lake or some place that is cool and wet and beautiful. And then we can move on and forgot about this, right?" She smiled.

"Oh yes, there's this planet that has floating cities, it's a big hit with the tourists and there are entire cities that are set up like resorts and you can stay in a floating house and swim from room to room. You'll love it Rose, it is absolutely beautiful."

Rose smiled, "You'll have to take me back home first. I need to pick up my swimsuit and maybe buy another one, if there is going to be that much swimming. And I won't tell my mum about anything, so don't worry." She grinned at the Doctor's horrified expression for a moment before settling back on the bed, already raring to get moving and explore the promised water planet.


	5. Ear Aches

**Title: **E is for Ear Aches (5/26)

**Rating: **G/K

**Summary: **After a bit of a mishap with Torchwood in Victorian London Rose finds herself under the weather and doesn't want to make the Doctor upset by telling him.

**Length:** 3,387

**Disclaimer: **Doctor Who & associated. does not belong to me.

**Notes: **beta'd by the excellent and extremely helpful Anastasia Dove ( u/3793202/).

Rose's feet pounded along the cobblestone streets of Victorian London. The rain poured down, soaking her on the final mad dash to the TARDIS.

The Doctor had sworn up and down that coming here wasn't going to interfere with their previous visit to this time. After all, this was London, not Scotland and he told her that Queen Victoria hadn't banned them yet; they were too early in her time stream for her to have met them yet.

Rose had seen that as conformation of her long suspected belief that the Doctor was mad, either that or absolutely awful at landing in the correct time. It had only been a few minutes after they'd left the TARDIS, when the Torchwood agents descended on them. At first, she hadn't understood what was happening. They had clearly not been the Police; their interest in the Doctor should have given that away instantly.

They'd been running through London ever since. Rose had felt rather let down on this trip, and she was feeling run down now-in more ways than just the obvious. The Doctor had been truly worried for their safety, but with the TARDIS in the enemy's hands, there hadn't been much that he'd been able to do. He'd been strangely serious for the three days that they'd been on the run.

This should be the culmination of it all; the Doctor had found the TARDIS and he'd passed word to her in the odd ways that he had developed, through the homeless children and in the details that he knew she would notice and recognise. There was going to be a diversion and in that small space of time, she was going to have to run through the Torchwood London headquarters, to meet him outside the TARDIS. Then they could get out of this time. The TARDIS was supposed to remind him to flag it or something, so that he didn't come here again, at least not with this regeneration's face.

Rose ran blindly into the building that the Doctor had told her was holding the TARDIS. She crashed through three sets of doors; each was unlocked neatly, as if someone had used a sonic screwdriver. The fourth set of doors opened into a large storage area of some kind. Rose glanced around, finally seeing the light blue of the TARDIS behind some boxes and almost on the other side of the room. She glanced over her shoulder before running to the police box.

The TARDIS was locked, the Doctor wasn't there. For a second her heart fell, but the pounding replaced it and she fumbled for the chain around her neck, slipping it off, turning the key and then pushing the door open. The ship was warm and dry, which was more than she could say for London. It smelled clean, no rotten grass lying around or muck underneath the grating. Rose walked up to the jump-seat and let herself collapse now that she was sure there weren't any bedbugs underneath her.

Even though she felt like there were important things that she should be doing, Rose just sat for a while; enjoying the peaceful silence and the warmth.. These things didn't really belong on the TARDIS, but she was happy to wait for the Doctor. Finally, she decided to get up and moving. If the Doctor wasn't there in fifteen minutes, she was going to take a shower. Rose tucked her feet up on the jump-seat and angled her head towards the door before resting it on the jump-seat.

The sound of the TARDIS door opening woke her up. She bolted upright in a second, remembering all the times she'd managed a quick nap in between running from the Torchwood operatives. But there was nowhere to run now, and as she came to full wakefulness, she realised that there wasn't any reason to run. The Doctor, a bit the worse for wear, but still the Doctor was leaning on the closed door of the TARDIS. Rose walked to his side and helped him up; he seemed asleep on his feet.

"Rose, that you?" He peered out at her, through eyebrows caked full of dirt and a scratched and bruised face. When she smiled and nodded, he managed a tired smile back. "I was worried; I can't lose you Rose." He grinned. "Let's go to bed now."

Rose nodded. "That sounds wonderful. Come on."

She had to help him into the interior of the TARDIS, but once they were through that, the doors to their bedrooms were right in front of them, open and comfortable. Rose made sure that the Doctor collapsed on top of his bed, before heading into her room. She left her dirty clothes on the floor in a heap, then crawled into her bed in fresh knickers and a tank top, hoping that the Doctor would get some sleep and in turn let her sleep before their next adventure.

But as much as Rose had wanted the opportunity to get some sleep, she was rudely awoken a few hours later, by a pounding headache. Her first thought was that she'd caught the plague or cholera or something else that they had an abundance of in old London, but she felt better after a glass of water from the bathroom and rubbing some of the dirt off her face. Leaving the glass and the flannel she stumbled back to bed, hitting her foot on the edge of the bedpost as she scrambled back under the covers. Sighing as her headache intensified, she turned to lay sideways on her pillow. Despite her inability to find a comfortable position, Rose eventually fell asleep.

The next time she woke up it happened for slowly. The smell of fresh tea slowly seeped into her nose, the feeling of her clean sheets on her skin came next, and then the pain returned. From her current position, she was pretty sure that there were blisters and bruises on her feet and when she turned her head and the bit of a headache she still had, intensified and shifted to behind her ear. Rose gasped and sat up, a hand clutching at the burning sensation, she tried to rub it out, to no avail.

Now that the warm and peaceful feeling of just waking up was gone, Rose wasted no time getting out of bed and into the shower, trying her hardest to ignore the pain in her ear. The shower was warm and once the water stopped running dirty brown through her hair and off her body, she felt much better. The TARDIS provided her with warm towels as she stepped from the bath and Rose wrapped one around her waist and then without thinking, leaned over and flipped her hair over her head to rub at it with another towel. The burning in her ear turned into a hot stabbing pain, that didn't weaken or go away once she had flipped her head the right-side up again.

Rose leaned against the sink, cupping cool water in her hands and holding them to her ear, but the burning was on the inside and it didn't go any good. Slowly, most of the fresh pain dissipated and she cleaned her teeth, forgoing any makeup at this time. She put on sweatpants and a sweatshirt over a fresh tank top and checked both her purse and her backpack for some paracetamol or something to quell the pain. But her bottles were empty and Rose made a mental note to get some more whenever they next stopped off someplace that had shops and medicines she recognized.

The smell of tea directed her to the kitchen where the Doctor was sitting at the table, a large stack of toast and bacon in front of him. He smiled at her when she came in and gestured to the place across from his, where a covered plate sat waiting next to a mug of tea that he'd neglected to remove the bag from. She mustered a small grin for him and took a seat, folding her legs up on the chair.

The Doctor finished his food quickly, and ate another heaping plateful while she picked at her food and had one small sip of the tea, realising that it was much too strong and leaving it sitting beside her plate.

"Rose." The Doctor looked at her over his empty plate, "I never should have brought us to London. I thought it would be safe, and I'm so very sorry that it wasn't."

"It's not your fault that we saved Queen Victoria from a werewolf and she founded an institute that's sole purpose is to find and imprison us," Rose shrugged.

"Well we're safe now and it's off to new adventures!" the Doctor nodded. He stood up and cleared his dishes off the table and into the sink before glancing at her still mostly full plate, "Are you all right Rose?"

"Now that we're back, I'm better," she smiled," Let's go somewhere nice and quiet today, maybe warm and dry too."

He laughed and left the kitchen.

Once Rose heard the door to the control open and close, she dumped the remainder of her tea down the drain and the rest of her food into a container for later, although it would probably just be stored indefinitely by the TARDIS, until she threw it out in a few months because no one was ever going to eat it. Then, with the feeling of blood pounding through her ear, Rose left the kitchen and wondered if she could find the infirmary on her own and without the Doctor finding out.

She had thought about telling him that her ear hurt and that two or three of the popped blisters on her feet were weeping some kind of yellow fluid, but after seeing his guilt she decided that she couldn't add anything more to it and kept quiet, she could take care of this on her own, or it would eventually get better if she didn't do anything.

But after half an hour of wandering through the increasingly twisty corridors of the TARDIS, Rose hadn't found anything of use, although she had managed to find the swimming pool and a very large fancy office that she couldn't imagine this Doctor would ever use. Rounding yet another corner, she hoped that the next door she tried would be the one that she needed, but it opened before she could get to it and the Doctor stood in the doorway.

"Rose, there you are, I was just wondering where you were," He grinned and looked at the corridors around her. "Did you get lost trying to find the control room?"

"Nah, I was just exploring a bit," Rose followed him into the control room and shrugged, "We going to do some real exploring now?" She glanced at the door that led to the outside, as if it would open and reveal some new world, beyond the wood.

"I think I've found just the place," the Doctor grinned," Deserts with hot springs that are the size of Lake Superior and yet are never more than eleven feet deep. The water is so clear and the steam blows the sand on the adjacent desert into little clouds that feel absolutely amazing."

The journey to the planet wasn't so pleasant. The TARDIS did its usual knocking and rocking around and Rose found that every pitch and twirl sent a stab of pain through her head, but she fixed a smile on her face and imagined the warm feel of sand and steam between her fingers and on her skin. When the Doctor finally landed, with a bump that felt bigger than she'd ever felt before, Rose couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief, and pretended to ignore the look at the Doctor gave her from the other side of the console.

As Rose got back to her feet, she tried to fight the impulse to wince as the pain in her feet grew and the stabbing continued in her head. When she noticed the Doctor looking at her, she forced a smile hoping that he would quickly get distracted and move his attention onto something else. Normally she liked being the object of the Doctor's focus, but when she was trying to hide something it couldn't be worse off.

The Doctor came around the console, his hands casually stuffed into his suit pockets. "Rose, are you all right?" He regarded her carefully as if looking for some visible injury.

The smile that Rose was forcing grew a bit larger. "Fine Doctor. Let's go swim and sand and whatever else we're going to do today." She could almost feel the warmth outside the TARDIS and imagined the relaxing and healing that she'd be able to do without ever having to bug him or worsen his guilt.

He looked her up and down again and his expression plainly wrote his doubt on his face, but he let the subject fall. "Get what you need from your room then and we'll be off."

Rose changed into her swimsuit and as she was sitting on her bed peeling off her socks, she realised what a huge mistake she'd made. Her feet were tender and bits of the material of her sock stuck to the weeping blister sores that she had. She looked at her sandals and wondered how exactly she was going to survive with sores on her feet at a sand covered beach.

This was a bit too much to bear. And, so, she lay back on her bed; careful to keep her head perfectly straight, so that the pounding in either one of her ears didn't intensify. She closed her eyes and bit her lip, wondering how long it would take for her to recover and if she could continue to put the Doctor off until then.

The rap of the Doctor's knuckles on her door surprised her, but when the door- which she obviously had failed to latch properly- flew open, it was hard to say which one of them was more surprised. The Doctor stood there, staring at her feet and she hurried pulled her legs up onto the bed and pulled a sheet over her body; she was only in her swimsuit.

There was no stopping him now, the Doctor came into her room and with a look to her for permission he sat down on the bed next to her. "Rose, you should have told me." The guilt and disappointment was heavy in his voice. "You know that I would have helped you, there's no reason to suffer."

Despite her best efforts, Rose felt tears pooling behind her eyes. Everything was coming together now, the awful things that she'd seen in London, the pain in her head and feet, the awful feeling that she was hurting the Doctor. No matter what she did and that there was nothing she could do. She managed to choke out a sorry before turning her body away from him, her head still perfectly vertical.

He got off her bed and retrieved her dressing gown from the floor and handed it to her before glancing down at her feet. "All right to the infirmary it is. I'll get those taken care of and then we can go to the beach. Twenty minutes and you'll be as good as new!"

He stopped her from trying to stand up and scooped her up in his arms. At first Rose worried that she'd be too heavy for this Doctor, he was so much smaller than the previous one. But if he had any difficulty carrying her, he didn't let it show and they left the room and he pushed open the door across the corridor with his foot to reveal the infirmary.

Rose waited as he set her down on the exam couch and pulled the sonic screwdriver out of his pocket. It hummed quietly, as he ran it over her feet and then around her body in general, she looked at her lap as he ran it around her head, not wanting to see his disappointed expression yet again.

But he didn't say anything. Instead, he crossed over to the cabinets and retrieving the things that he would need to fix her feet. He set the items on a standing tray table and took a seat on the high stool next to the couch.

"Okay Rose, why don't you just lie back for a minute," there was a strained smile on his face, "I'm going to clean your injures and then I'll fix them in a second with a dermal sealant and regenerator. Just hold on for a couple minutes."

The antiseptic was cold and any pressure against the blister sore thingies hurt, but Rose had held her breath in anticipation of a sting that had never came and she tried to relax as the buzz of the dermal regenerator meant that the first injury was gone and there was no trace of it on her foot any longer.

When he was finished, Rose sat back up and swung her feet back and forth, revealing the fact that the air passing over her feet, no longer sent little shock-waves of pain up her legs. She slid off the couch as the Doctor up away his tools and was almost as the door by the time that he'd finished cleaning up.

"Rose, come back please," the Doctor didn't look at her; he just returned to the side of the exam couch and waited.

She turned back and walked slowly to his side and hopped back on the exam couch, looking down the whole time, determined not to meet his eyes.

"I'm so sorry Rose; I never met for you to get hurt or ill or for any of this to happen," the Doctor almost sighed.

"No, I should have been more careful Doctor. It's my fault that I couldn't figure out what I needed, and that I misread everything. And spent the night sleeping under the bridge... and just screwing up."

"Rose, we've both made mistakes. And now it's time to fix them," The Doctor covered her hands, with one of his and used the other to brush a stray lock of hair off her face," We can never move on if you're still suffering, we can both get better and fix this. Please let me help you. Tell me when you need something and I can fix it."

Rose nodded minutely so as to not aggravate her ears and head. A tear slipped out of her eye, "Okay, please help me."

The Doctor nodded and handed her a bottle of water and several tablets. "These should clear up the infection in a few hours." He had another little bottle in his hand. "And I've got 24th century ear drops that can get rid of the pain until then."

It hurt to tilt her head to one side for the Doctor to place a single drop of the liquid in her ear. But then that side was blissfully numb and turning her head for the other side didn't hurt at all. Rose breathed a sigh of relief as the pain ended and finished off the water bottle that the Doctor had given her, enjoying the now pain free experience of swallowing.

"So are we going swimming in shallow hot springs the size of lake superior now?" Rose asked with a grin. Being pain free and guilt free had done a lot for her mood in the past few minutes.

"We've got to wait," the Doctor grinned back," You go take a nap and I'll put together a picnic basket and then once you've slept and the dermal sealant has had time to set and the infection in your ears is gone, we'll go and you'll enjoy it even more then."

Rose nodded and smiled and at the last minute threw her arms around the Doctor squeezing him tightly to her. "Thanks." She whispered as she crushed her face into his chest and felt the tension of the past few days melt away.


	6. Frozen

**Title: **F is for Frozen(6/26)

**Author: **EvelynCarver

**Rating: **K

**Summary: **Skating leads to an unfortunate dunking for Rose.

**Length: **2715

**Disclaimer: **Doctor Who & associated. does not belong to me.

The Doctor had been right; Mutalisk was more beautiful than anything Rose had ever seen. It was also the coldest place she'd ever been and she'd been in an open air skyship in the middle of winter.

Rose wrapped her sweater a little more securely around herself and smiled broadly at the Doctor, trying to stop her teeth from chattering so nosily against each other. "So can we go skating or something? You promised me skating." She glanced at the frozen lake in front of them, the sunlight glistening off its surface. Looking at it was nice enough but she wanted to do something, and it might just help her to warm up.

Ten minutes later they were both standing in front of the lake again. The Doctor had disappeared into the TARDIS to return with hot chocolate and those old fashioned skates that fastened over your shoes. Rose smiled a less teeth-chattery smile and thanked him for the hot chocolate, sighing as the warm cup defrosted her hands.

The ice was shiny as Rose cautiously placed her left foot onto it. Despite the Doctor's reassurances that the entire planet had been frozen for thousands of years and wasn't likely to unfreeze itself anytime soon she still felt rather unsafe skating on a lake. Rose stepped onto the ice completely and slowly turned to face the Doctor on her clunky skates.

"It's fun Doctor! Come on out!" She smiled and turned, pushing herself along the ice with a few graceful kicks of her long legs. About a third of the way across of the tiny lake she stopped and looked back at the Doctor. He was still standing on the bank; he hadn't even made a move to put his skates on yet.

Rose had begun skating back to the Doctor when she first realised that something was wrong. The ice was shifting under her weight and she could hear it cracking. And as she got closer to the Doctor, she could see that he was staring at the ice with a horrified expression and was pointing the sonic screwdriver at the ice and the device was whirring with an ever increasing ferocity.

With her legs pumping as hard as they had anytime the Doctor had told her to run on an alien planet, Rose pushed herself harder, she had to reach the bank before the ice gave out. She couldn't imagine falling into the icy depths below her.

She was only a few final steps from the shore when the ice finally gave out underneath her. The ice cracking seemed unnaturally loud as it snapped directly beneath her and as soon as the icy water hit her skin Rose drew in a quick breath as she kicked her legs against the water.

A moment later her legs hit the bottom and she was surprised to discover that she could still breathe. The lake was shallow here, the water only coming up to her waist and the ice chunks gathering around her as she staggered towards the shore.

Despite the shallow water, the iciness of it around her chest made it hard to breathe and her entire body hurt and ached from the cold. The water had splashed up onto her face as she'd fallen and her face hurt as if she was burning underneath the ice rather than freezing.

Rose struggled through the last steps to the Doctor and to the bank. She was vaguely aware of him speaking to her, but the freezing had reached her brain and she couldn't make out any of the words. Reaching out a hand, the Doctor seized her and pulled her the last metre. Rose's brain still wasn't working and the Doctor's face was beginning to swim in front of hers.

Her elbows hit the solidly frozen ground first and the Doctor was saying something that her ears couldn't hear, they were too cold, and then he was pushing something into her hands, the sonic screwdriver, she looked at it and then at him, wondering for a second why he was giving her the device, he was the one that knew how to use it. Then it began to grow hot in her hands and Rose clutched it tighter, pulling the heat closer to her body.

The Doctor pulled a tiny square of something shiny, a bit like aluminium foil, out of his pocket and shook it before spreading a blanket over her. Rose stared at his empty hands and then at the thin covering that he had thrown over her, her icy cold brain was trying to make the connections, but it wasn't going anywhere.

"Come on, got to get up Rose."

She let him pull her to her feet and then rearrange the blanket and make sure that she was still holding the sonic screwdriver. They began a slow walk back in the direction of the TARDIS, by now the water in her clothes had been given ample time to freeze and every step was heralded by the cracking of ice in her jeans.

The journey to the TARDIS seemed to take hours. Rose had almost given up halfway through, but the Doctor let her stop and take a break, even if it had only been a few seconds. That break had helped, she didn't feel cold anymore and the shivering had stopped, walking was still hard and she was so tired, but each step didn't hurt so much and the cold no longer burned through her body.

Something seemed off about the TARDIS, the door swung open as the Doctor reached for it and he half pulled, half carried her through the console room, only there was no hallway on the other side of the door, just a white tile room that seemed vaguely familiar. The Doctor was saying something, she could hear the sounds and see his mouth moving, but none of it made any sense to her, maybe it was the cold, but the more rational parts of her brain told her that it was another language.

After the Doctor stopped speaking, a beat thrummed along the side of the wall and on the opposite side of the white tiled room a door appear. The Doctor picked her up in his arms, ignoring her feeble protests and walked the length of the room.

In the ten or so seconds that it took to cross the floor, Rose nearly fell asleep. She was so tired and now that they were back in the TARDIS and the Doctor was carrying her there was no reason to stay awake. Her eyes drifted closed until her attempt at rest was disrupted once again by the Doctor setting her down and shaking her shoulders roughly.

"Rose. Rose! Listen to me, you cannot fall asleep. You must stay awake now, please!"

She opened her eyes and stared blearily out at the room. At first she couldn't tell the difference, it was white and shiny, but it must have been different because she was laying on something and there were interruptions in the smooth white lines of the walls. But the Doctor wasn't in front of her or around her anymore. She was alone now, and tired, if the Doctor wasn't here then he wouldn't mind if she took a little nap.

But as soon as she had closed her eyes again, the Doctor was pulling her back into a sitting position and raising her arms above her head.

"Come on Rose, just help me out here. I'll get you warmed up as fast as I can."

He lifted her arms up above her head and she tried to keep them there, but they were so heavy and he was tugging on her sodden sweatshirt and pulling it over her head and she had to keep her arms up or they would be stuck up there. Once that was off she leaned against him while he pulled at the bit of cloth still stuck around her and then she realised that she was topless in front of him, but he wrapped a warm blanket around her and the thought passed.

She couldn't remain sitting without his help. Her body was too tired and her head just felt too heavy for her to support it. The Doctor let her lie back and then he pushed up the blanket and fiddled with something near her hips.

"Up you go Rose, just need a little help here."

She lifted her hips for him and he slid down her clothes and then pulled another warmed blanket underneath her legs to wrap it back around her. The cloth covering her was warm and starting to get moist as it absorbed the water that she was still covered in, her hair was especially wet, more so now that all the ice in it had melted.

The Doctor's face was hovering above hers again. He wasn't smiling and for a moment she wondered if she was in trouble or if something had gone very very wrong. But then he rubbed her shoulder through the blanket and forced a slight smile onto his face, he still didn't look happy.

"Rose, you're just a little bit hypothermic right now, you're freezing." He clarified when there was no recognition in her eyes at the term. "Lucky for you I have got just the things to fix you up right here. Tell if you start to feel cold or shiver or if you need anything."

It seemed like too much of an effort to nod and let him know that she understood so Rose continued to stare at his face until it left the area above her and she was left staring at the open space where it had used to be.

Her arm being drawn out of the warm cocoon of the blanket pulled a noise of protest from her throat, but the cold air didn't stop its assault and the vice like grip of Doctor's hand refused to yield her limb back to her.

"Little pinch." He said and then he was fixing something up down at her hand, she couldn't see it, but she could hear the rustling of medical supplies and packaging and then he moved up into her vision space again and touched something up and to the side, she still couldn't see it before he disappeared again.

She could hear his footsteps as his shoes touched the tile floor and then they stopped and then started again and he was back at her side, lifting up her head and wrapping her dripping hair in its own towel.

When he started to unwrap the blanket from around her upper body, she pulled away from him until he stopped her with a firm hand and then checked on whatever it was that was attached to her arm.

"These blankets are wet now Rose, I've got fresh ones here at are even warmer and it's time for you to start warming up some more. You'll only be cold for a second, and then you'll be even warmer than before."

There was something soothing in the Doctor's tone and Rose really didn't have a choice, so she relaxed and let him remove the soaked cloth and replace it with dry and warmed blankets that felt like a cross between her flannel sheets and polar fleece pyjamas.

She was warm on the outside now, wrapped tightly in the covers and there was heat spreading through her chest and torso now, it was similar to the last time she had gotten a bit tipsy, but some kind of advanced medical technological gadget was probably at work in this case. The Doctor sat down on a stool next to her bed and pointed a straw towards her face.

"What's that?" She asked, hoping for something warm and sweet.

The Doctor smiled and moved it close enough to her face that if she raised her head, the straw would rest inside her mouth. "It's a bit like the hot chocolate you like so much. Just give it a try."

When she lifted her head, he slipped an arm under her neck and let her rest against him as she took a cautious first sip of the drink. She took a longer drink after that and then another.

"It's good. Kind of like soup though, more salty than sweet, it's not really like hot chocolate at all."

It was an odd combination of tastes, almost sweet and definitely salty, it reminded her a little of the sports drinks that she had drank on occasion during her childhood. This was much nicer than those, it was thick and almost milky, but milk didn't taste this good with salt and spices in it.

Hot chocolate might not have been the best way to describe it.

"What's wrong Rose? Are you feeling unwell again?" Cool fingertips stretched out from the arm under her head to rest on her temple and she took another sip of the drink he was offering.

"Can I have some tea? Or plain water?" Rose asked her voice less gravelly and beginning to sound more like herself again.

The Doctor set her head back down gently on the pillows underneath her and pulled his arm out. "Not just yet, no tea, no caffeine and you really need something warm with sugar and starches for your body to burn as it warms you up again."

Rose sighed but she drank until the Doctor stopped pressing and let her pull back, now with more than half of the drink in her stomach she was feeling much warmer, from the outside and the inside this time. Besides, her eyelids were heavy and she could always ask him again after she took a little nap.

But the Doctor seemed displeased at her intentions to take a nap and he shook her shoulder gently, smoothing the covers back into place afterwards.

"Can't sleep yet Rose. Just a few more minutes and then you can rest. Would you like anything now? A snack or a drink? I'm afraid you still can't have any tea."

She would have pouted but it seemed like too much work. The taste of tea was something that she was really in the mood for, with milk to make it creamy and warm and it would be lovely. Just like coming home after a long cold walk from school or work. Like in the rare days when her mother had been home when she arrived and they had shared tea or cocoa and sat, sometimes watching the snow fall or a new DVD that Micky had lent them.

"My feet feel like blocks of ice." They ached and there was a slight burning in her toes, but mostly it felt like she was wearing boots packed full of snow and she didn't think that she could have moved her feet if she had had to.

The Doctor frowned and went to the end of the bed and flipped the covers up, she shivered as the seemingly frigid air hit her legs and he bent down, taking the sonic screwdriver out of his jacket. There was the sound of the device working and then he straightened up and the frown was gone.

She jumped in surprise when his hands touched her feet, they felt much warmer than usual and she wondered if he had warmed them or if she really was that cold. But then he flipped the blankets back down with one hand and then slid in under the blankets to join its partner in rubbing some blood back into her frozen feet.

"This any better?" He asked after a few moments of his rubbing had passed in silence.

Rose nodded. "Can I sleep now? Please, just a short break. It'll be warmed when I wake up."

He paused in his ministrations for a moment, "Yes, but be careful not to dislodge any of the lines or monitors. When this bag is finished that should be enough to have brought your blood temperature back up to an acceptable level."

She smiled and let her eyes drift closed as they wanted to. "See you in a bit Doctor." And she could also hear his smile in return as the heat came back to her feet.


	7. Gestation

**Title: **G is forGestation (7/26)

**Author: **EvelynCarver

**Rating: **T

**Summary: **Part 1 of 2. Rose isn't sure what's wrong at first. And once she finds out, there is no way that she can tell the Doctor, even if he knows that the issue isn't all as it seems.

**Length: **1720

**Disclaimer: **Doctor Who & associated. does not belong to me.

The first time Rose didn't notice anything. But that was understandable, between the heartbreak of being dumped, by Mickey of all people, and the Game Station and the aftermath of that, it was amazing that she didn't forget more in the time that followed.

With the New Doctor on New Earth and seeing Cassandra again, but mostly the New Doctor, there were other things, much more important things, on her mind. But after they got back to the TARDIS, washing the fear of the Torchwood House away with hot chocolate and chips, the thought popped up again. She squashed it and went to bed wondering if days spent time travelling were counted the same as regular ones.

These thoughts were on the forefront of her mind over the next few days and she could barely focus on the zero gravity gymnastics competition and their entire trip to Hollywood in the twenties. It all passed in a surprisingly peaceful blur around her.

The next morning, or what passed for morning in the TARDIS, she asked to go home. Christmas had been a long time ago and she was running out of clean laundry, and while all of that was true, it wasn't the true reason that she was desperate to return home. She ignored the lack of enthusiasm the Doctor showed at her destination choice and focused her mind on the goal of the day, arranging for the Doctor to pick her up in six hours and not a moment earlier.

Rose didn't tell her mum anything either. She had called ahead but Jackie was working and left soon after she arrived. If only she was a little braver, a little less afraid of the reactions of her loved ones, then she wouldn't have to do this alone.

She left just after lunch, with a shopping list and identification that she hadn't needed to use in over a year. She made it to the clinic just before her appointment was scheduled to begin and took her seat in the cramped and stained waiting area.

The nurse that took her back in to an examination room told her that they were running on time today and Rose sat nervously while the young woman explained the tests and then sent her off with a sample cup into the adjacent toilet.

The blood test and the twenty minute wait in another tiny waiting room, this one with little groups of woman sitting together passed by her in a blur. No matter what the results showed something was going to change and Rose wasn't ready for the test to come back, either way.

When she got home a few hours later, carrying bulging shopping bags, the entire day seemed surreal. She had woken up on the TARDIS and now all she was aware of was the voice of the young nurse echoing between her ears. She barely had enough time to throw her freshly cleaned clothes and new purchases into her backpack when the knock came on the door. She opened it and brought the Doctor in, steeling herself for the conversation that was about to follow.

Rose felt awful as she insisted that the Doctor sit down and stay for a cup of tea when he clearly wanted to get going. But she couldn't bear to be kicked out of the TARDIS, it would be much easier of it happened here. She could handle not being allowed back to the TARDIS, or so she was trying to tell herself.

As she opened her mouth, the door opened again and Jackie stepped in, having gotten off work early to spend time with her daughter. Rose tried to swallow her words back, but she was already committed and and there was no stopping anything now.

"I'm pregnant."

Jackie crossed the floor in a second and the sound of flesh smacking cheekbone reverberated throughout the apartment,

"Mum! What are you doing?" Rose asked standing up and sliding between the stunned Doctor and her furious mother.

"Unless the next words out of your mouth are to invite me to the wedding between you and this alien or to tell me that this is some idiotic misguides prank, I suggest you shut your mouth!"

Her mum's tone brought back adolescent memories of getting caught doing any number of things her mother didn't approve of: Jimmy Stone, cigarettes, staying out all night, and more that she couldn't ever remember any more.

"The Doctor's got nothing to do with this! Leave him out of it!" Rose could hear the anger in her tone, it sounded scarily alike to her mother's.

"Then whose fault is it? Who has got something to do with it Rose? You're not exactly the Virgin Mary."

"Mickey! All right, it was Mickey." She couldn't help herself; the name just forced itself out of her lips.

The scraping of the chair legs as the forgotten Doctor stood up grabbed both women's attention.

"Right then" He looked between them as if trying to decide who was the more deadly of the two.

"Jackie, Rose and I are going to tee TARDIS to have a little chat. Rose, get your bag and we're going."

Rose's heart jumped a little at being told to get her bag; maybe he wasn't going to kick her out. Or maybe he was saying it just to toy with her. They left the flat in silence and he shook his head when she tried to speak as they crossed the pavement to the TARDIS. Inside he jerked his head at the jump seat and she sat, leaving her backpack on the floor beside her.

She had never seen the new Doctor this quiet and serious before. Usually his mouth was constantly moving as his mind worked and when it stopped like this, it just seemed wrong. She watched his movements with some trepidation as he pulled out of the sonic screwdriver and ran it around her, stopping finally and frowning at the results.

"Come on."

She obeyed, following him into the TARDIS and down a corridor to another. The TARDIS must have been moving their destination to give him time to think because the Doctor never took this long to get where he was going.

When they finally stopped in the infirmary she followed yet another of his head jerks and seated herself on the exam table. He turned away and began opening drawers, searching for something. She remembered the clinic from earlier that day and how much nicer it had been to just sit in a chair and how they had already had anything prepared. Waiting just made her more nervous.

"I went to a clinic." She told him and continued when he didn't motion for her to stop. "It's not like I just assumed it. They did a test and it was positive."

The grin on the Doctor's face when he turned back was happier than she had seen in ages. He set a piece of metal about the thickness of a paperback book on the table next to her. There was a handprint sunk into the top of it.

"Okay Rose, just put your hand on there and we'll see this baby of yours." He motion to the opposite wall whose entire surface was kind of shiny and wet looking.

She took a deep breath and set her hand on the metal expecting some kind of shock. But there was nothing and then a moment later a cutaway scan of her torso appeared on the wall, in full colour. The doctor used something vaguely similar to a game controlled to navigate around and soon he had isolated and amplified what looked like a peanut sized mass on one side of the screen and some other organ that Rose vaguely remembered from a science class on the other.

"Now Rose, this is your uterus." He highlighted the organ. "Yours is empty right now, no baby. Despite those test results and whatever made you think that you were pregnant in the first place, you are not pregnant."

The "not pregnant" was almost as much of a shock as the nurse saying "pregnant" had been earlier in the morning. Taking care not to move her left hand from the monitor she used her right to point to the mass on the screen.

"Then what is that?"

"I'm glad you asked." The doctor rotated the tiny mass and Rose was greeted with a terrifying sight of hundreds of glistening teeth and a grey sluggish movement of the thing in the image.

She took her hand off the scanner and both of her hands gently touched her stomach. "Please tell me that thing is not inside me and that this creature is something from the 41st century's Godzilla."

"Rose this is an almost fully mature Batzing slug. They're a parasite from the Batzie Province of Merkle. It's quite ingenious really, they inhabit humans and the native ape like species and cause their host to exhibit signs of pregnancy until, well until they are fully grown and eat their way out of the mother host body."

Rose stared at him, horrified. "Please tell me you can get it out of me. Like right now, that sounds like a good time."

Now the Doctor's excited, I've figured it out grin, faded a bit. "I'm afraid that it has been quite some time since I did a surgery this delicate. Let me think."

""Surgery!? That thing is tiny. Can't you get it out some other way?"

"Nope." He was back to cheerful, educational smile now. "It wraps it developing tendrils around blood vessels and it will need to be removed by hand. Unless, oh wait, I haven't got one of those." He looked around, thinking in his own little world.

Rose got off the exam table, wondering if the slug could feel her moving around. "Can I go home for the surgery? I mean back to London."

The Doctor looked at her. "Do any surgeons on Earth in the year 2006 now what a Batzing slug is? Let alone how to remove it?"

She shook her head and she was still going to have to come up with some way to explain all of this to her mum.

"A surgeon! Rose, you're brilliant! We're going back to New Earth!"

_To be continued in part 2, H is for Hospital_


	8. Hospitals

**Title: **H is for Hospital (8/26)

**Author: **EvelynCarver

**Rating: **T

**Summary: **Part 2 of 2, Rose isn't pregnant and the Doctor knows just the surgeon to get That Thing out of her stomach.

**Length: **2244

**Disclaimer: **Doctor Who & associated. does not belong to me.

This side was New Earth was nothing like the area from their previous visit. No apple grass, no New New York sitting on the horizon, just a cold wind and some ugly grey squat buildings that looked like the industrial region of any city on Earth.

"Where are we again?" Rose asked, holding tightly the doctor's hand as they walked up to the closest building.

He opened the door for her, "This is New Earth, welcome to the Canadian Stairs Rose."

The building was much different on the inside. It was still empty, but it was decorated with trees and rocks and the strong smell of evergreen permeated through everything. There were downwards escalators every few feet, all labelled in a language that the TARDIS translated into English and were accompanied by little pictograms and must have symbolized something to the people of this age because she didn't known what any of them meant.

"The Canadian Hospital is not governed or staffed by the same board of cats that we met before. It will be almost a year until those events transpire here, so we shouldn't run into any problems on that account."

The Doctor took her to the escalator marked Healthcare and they rode down through a bustling and busy city to a sterile white and green hospital that seemed to more resemble the facilities from her time on Earth than the cat run hospital of New New York. The Doctor nudged her and motioned to the little shop that stood just a few metres away from the base escalator.

There was no wait in the reception area. The Doctor passed his psychic paper under some sort of scanner and then moment later a door behind the desk opened and a pleasant looking middle aged man emerged to embrace the Doctor while Rose was left standing at the side. When they pulled apart he offered her a handshake and showed them into a small office type room and motioned for them to take seats on the low couch on opposite sides of a low table from him.

"So, Doctor, what brings you back to New Earth and in need of a top surgeon? I take it this isn't just a social call." He glanced at Rose, his enthusiasm almost as explosive as the Doctor's.

"Rose, this is Sid Phillips, an old friend of mine. Sid, this is Rose, she's been travelling with me for a bit and she's managed to pick up a Batzing slug and it's nearly mature."

There was a look of curiosity and scientific interest on Sid's face but Rose could see it conflicting with compassion and sympathetic medical care. Sid stared at the doctor for a moment before fixing his attention back on Rose.

"You're from a different time right?" She nodded and he continued, "Between that and the maturity level of the slug we should be able to remove it easily enough. Did you bring the scan results?" He asked, directing the question at the Doctor.

"No, but I can take care of the results here once you get what you need from them. Will it be possible to do this today?"

Sid opened a small device that reminded Rose of a cell phone and a PDA, "It should be. Just give me some time to get things set up and we can get the scans started." He shared another quick handshake with the Doctor before leaving.

The Doctor leaned back on the couch and looked at his companion. "It'll be all right. Sid's an interesting man; I helped him escape from a prison camp. He's almost fifty years ahead of this time, but from a different part of the universe. He's a phenomenal surgeon."

Rose pulled her knees up onto the couch to encircle them with her arms. "But what exactly is going to happen? Is it like my time? Will it scar?"

"It shouldn't." The Doctor put an arm around her shoulders. "First they'll do some scans, like the one that I had and then they usually use a cascade of nanogenes or a genetically engineered virus to breakdown the slug. Then, if they used the nanogenes, the nanogenes will take particle sized pieces of the slug with them when they leave you. If they use a virus then it will all be absorbed by your body and it will be like it was never there to begin with."

Rose nodded and curled into him. "Okay. And you'll make sure it's all okay? For a person from my time, I mean. And that there is no clone farm involved?"

He smiled, but it was a gentle and reassuring smile, not his usual energy infused grin. "There is nothing bad here. You are going to be fine."

As they waited for Sid to return the Doctor told her about the surgeon and his resourcefulness in captivity and the way that he had assimilated into New Canada and the hospital here so perfectly. He told her stories about the Batzie planet and the underground waterfalls that they were famous for. He offered to bring her after the surgery but one Batzing slug was enough for her and she refused.

Sid returned with a young cat that terrified Rose for a moment before she realised that this cat was male and not a nun and seemed sane enough at first glance.

"Rose, Doctor, this is my student and assistant Doctor Herriot. He'll be assisting me with the procedure and the scans. And we're ready for those now, if you'll just come with us?"

Rose followed the junior cat doctor down a hallway and back to the reception area and then through a labyrinth of hallways from there until they arrived at a rather fancy imaging suite. She spotted several small booths that had the metal hand scanners that the Doctor had used, but the cat directed her to a much larger model.

There were indents for her feet and the book scanner metal box things for both of her hands and some kind of metal pail like thing that the cat lowered over her head and tightened until it rested heavily on her forehead. He stepped away and returned a moment later to help her out of it all.

"You got everything that fast?"

The Doctor stepped out of a control booth. "Yep, it's all saved and Sid is going to look it over and then we're ready to get started. And the sooner we start, the sooner we finish."

Rose and the Doctor were handed off to an automated computer guide that brought them back through the maze of hallways to the office to await Sid's analysis and solution to their problem.

Sid and the cat returned and handed Rose and the Doctor a kind of tablet computer. Rose tried to follow along but the first time an image of her insides bound up by pulsing grey slug appeared he looked away and trusted the Doctor to sort this out so that there was no slug like that inside her again and this slug came out as quickly as possible.

"We'll leave you here to think it over and you give us a call as soon as you have made a decision." Sid said as he got up and handed the doctor another piece of literature and left the office.

Once the door had closed the Doctor turned to her slight annoyance and frustration showing on his face. "Did you pay attention to any of that?"

"No." Rose said, in a very small voice.

He nodded and took that hand that she reached out towards him. "It's nothing too bad, just the Batzing slug is a little more mature than the ones that they are used to seeing and they're going to use a liquid nitrogen procedure to make it smaller before introducing nanogenes to get every bit of it out of your body."

"Okay." Rose moved closer to him and glanced at the tablet. "What does it change?"

"That's it. You'll have to wait for an hour or so before getting up after the procedure, just to make sure all your organs settle properly, but then we can be on our way to wherever you want to go." He grinned at her.

"Let's get this over with. Maybe later, tomorrow like, we can think about doing something,"

The Doctor called Sid back into the room with a button on the table.

"Are you ready to do this now?" He asked, looking back and forth from the Doctor to Rose.

Rose stood up and nodded, "Uh-hu. Let's get this over with quickly."

This walk wasn't as long as the previous one, the treatment room was in yet another wing of the seemingly endless hospital, but it was closer than the imagining suite in the diagnostics wing. There was a changing room in the treatment room and Rose put on the low waisted sweatpants and the smock top before the Doctor helped her get settled on the table, explaining that all the clothes in the hospital were individually tailored to the patient's needs and sizes through the use of a computer and clothes printer.

It helped that this didn't look anything like any medical clinic, hospital or Doctor's office that she had ever been to before. It was nicely decorated and the smell of evergreen was still the most persistent and strongest scent in the air.

When Sid arrived he wasn't dressed as she had expected, still in his same clothes and the sanitation shields around his wrists and neck would make gloves and a mask unnecessary, he didn't look anything like the surgeons from her time.

They set up a curtain that draped over her chest so she didn't have to see anything and Sid explained that the procedure would take about five minutes and then she would need to wait before getting up.

As they finished setting up the Doctor came to her side and took one of her hands in his. "It'll all be done soon Rose. Just focus on that."

"They're getting started now." The Doctor told her and she closed her eyes, not that she could see anything with them open.

She could feel the touches of hands on her stomach and then something cool and damp pressed on. The Doctor's fingers loosened around hers for a moment and then tighten again as she grabbed back at them.

"Rose, can you feel this?" Sid asked before she felt another touch on the stomach.

"Yes." She said, wondering if she wasn't supposed to be able to feel it.

"All right." Sid's voice broke through her voice again. "I'm going to put the liquid nitrogen into the slug; it may feel cold or pinch,"

Rose bit her lip as a piercing pain entered her stomach and she gasped as it pushed on and then stopped. She tightened her hold on the Doctor's hand and then there was another sensation of tugging that was quickly replaced with a deep ache in her stomach.

"And we'll give you the nanogenes in two minutes Rose." Sid said as she felt hands touch her stomach to slid her smock down and then the curtain on her chest was pulled away.

She opened her eyes slowly and looked accusingly at the Doctor. "You didn't tell me it would hurt."

He squeezed her hand. "Sorry, they aren't really equipped to deal with humans from the 21st century here. Not all of their medicine would be safe for you. The nanogenes should fix it all up. They can be programmed to a specific purpose and they won't just fix anything in your body, they're not like the nanogenes that we had to deal with before."

Sid stepped back to her side. "Rose, we're going to apply the nanogenes now." He squeezed a thick gold liquid out of a tube but it shimmered and turned into a cloud before hitting her smock and sinking into her stomach and disappearing inside her.

They waited and the cat assistant took a basin with a glowing bottom and held it close to her stomach and then Sid pulled her shirt up just enough to bare the place that the slug must have been. Soon she was watching the tiny golden particles emerge from her skin, each with a tiny grey dot. There were corresponding red dots of blood on her skin from where they emerged, but now she couldn't feel anything and when the basin was starting to get rather full, the last few nanogenes emerged alone and closed the tiny punctures that had been made by the others to get out.

Sid looked at the basin and ran a scanner over the contents. "All right, that's the lot of it. Rose, Doctor, it was a pleasure to see you again. There's a timer set for an hour and when that goes off, my assistant will confirm the slug is gone and your organs have recovered, and then you are free to go."

When the medical professions stepped out of the door, the Doctor took out his sonic screwdriver and waved it over her stomach. "They got it all Rose. No slug, no ruminants, it's completely gone." He grinned at her.

Rose smiled back, she felt as if the weight of the world had been removed from her shoulders. "Now I just have to figure out how to explain to my mother that I'm not actually pregnant."


	9. Insect Bites

**Tags: **hurt/comfort, rose Tyler, doctor who, ninth doctor, alphabet of ills, insect bites, paralysis

**Title: **I is for Insect Bites(9/26)

**Author: **EvelynCarver

**Rating: **PG

**Summary: **The Ninth Doctor and Rose save a planet for a dying Cyberman and meet some interesting wildlife in the process. And some of that wildlife seems to have it in for Rose.

**Length: **1834

**Disclaimer: **Doctor Who & associated. does not belong to me.

It all started with a trip to a desert planet that had some type of favoured salt for their chips that the Doctor insisted she had to try. In the process of leaving the TARDIS and trying to find the shop the Doctor remembered, they managed to stumble across the corrupt regime that had taken over and soon the Doctor discovered that a dying Cyberman was behind it all.

Normally Rose was all for saving other planets and defeating Cybermen, but sometime around midday she'd had enough. She was hungry and tired and something on the side of her neck really hurt. But she stood next to the Doctor in the sand dunes in front of the Cyberman and tried to find the energy to protest the way the people were being treatment and stop the evil.

While the Cyberman lay dead, sparking in the sand, the Doctor led her back to the TARDIS, two servings of greasy chips wrapped in paper finding their way into his mouth between words. He was rather pleased with himself, as usual, but Rose was finding it annoying and a bit too much to handle after the day that she'd had.

"I'm going to take a shower. Need to get this sand out of my hair." She told the Doctor, her tone coming across a bit more shortly than she had meant for it to. He looked at her for a minute, his face falling and the half chewed chips threatening to fall back into the paper with their as of yet undigested brothers.

The TARDIS was quiet and cool and after the long hot day in the sun, Rose revelled in that fact. The ship had left out ice cold water bottles on the kitchen table behind the first door that she had opened and the second door led to her bedroom and she grabbed a damp towel off the floor and headed back into the bathroom, turning the shower on full blast and freezing cold as she stripped out of her sand filled jeans and tank top.

Rose felt her leg cramp as she climbed into the shower, but the cold water soon drowned out the pain and the water numbed her back and neck and the itching and occasionally stabbing pain there diminished and then disappeared entirely. When the sand had been rinsed from her hair and was lining the bottom of the shower stall, she turned off the water and climbed out, drying off and taking a minute to massage the cramp in her calf wondering what had caused it all of a sudden.

She brushed her teeth and put her hair back into a wet ponytail for the night. Rose turned off the light in the bathroom and the light in the bedroom and crawled into her bed, pulling the blankets up around her. The heat of the desert was a distant memory now and the TARDIS had a tendency to feel cold for a human temperature scale, or so the Doctor had told her.

The ambient light from the glowing walls of the TARDIS woke her, the levels indicating that it was somewhere in the midmorning back on Earth in the time frame that she was used to. Her hair had come out of its ponytail and was tangled around her, feeling gummy and stiff. She turned on her side and gasped as a fierce pain stabbed through her neck. Ever so carefully she reached a hand back and felt for something, anything that could have caused the sudden pain.

Her groping fingers found nothing and Rose sat up, pulling her hair over her shoulders to the front of her body, keeping anything from accidentally brushing against her neck again. She pushed the blankets back and swung her legs over the side of the bed. And then she swung her legs out again only to feel the same static blockage that she had felt before.

With fear quickly rising in her throat, Rose rubbed her thigh hard, and then she pinched herself. She could see the angry red mark that her fingers had left, but there was no sensation, she could have not been touching her leg for all that she could feel. The first tendrils of her panic had grown into giant beanstalks now and Rose tightened her hands into fists in the bedclothes as she did the only thing that she could think of.

"DOCTOR!"

Her voice rang throughout the ship, the TARDIS catching onto her terror and amplifying the sound to very crack and crevice. It reverberated throughout the ship for a few seconds before fading completely.

The knock and subsequent opening of Rose's bedroom door came seconds later. The Doctor only had one shoe on and there was a piece of toast hanging out of his mouth, but he entered in a flurry, brandishing the sonic screwdriver in front of him like a weapon. He glanced around the room, his gaze finally settling on Rose's bed.

He raised an eyebrow at her, "Did ya have a bad dream Rose?"

She shook her head and thumped one of her legs. "Something's happened. I can't feel my legs."

The Doctor snapped out of his more playful mood in a second, he came to her bedside and knelt down, running the sonic screwdriver up and down her lower limbs, the lights flashing and the whirring sound emanating as the device did its work.

"You didn't drink anything on the planet?" He finally asked, standing up and tucking the sonic screwdriver into a pocket.

Rose shook her head. "You said that it wasn't safe for humans. Could that have caused this?"

He shook his head. "No, probably not, still, had to be sure."

Rose stretched towards the blankets at the end of her bed, she was feeling exposed now, in her summer pyjamas in front of the Doctor. But as she bent forward, he placed a hand on her lower back and bent over her folded form.

"What happened to your neck?"

She tried to crane her neck around to see what he meant, but the pain stabbed through again and then settled into a low level throbbing that didn't stop when she turned her head back to the front.

The Doctor's cool fingers touched her neck lightly and probed at the inflamed skin that she had felt earlier. She gasped in pain as he pressed down on the spot in the centre of the inflammation. And then the pain disappeared, she could hear the sonic screwdriver again and the Doctor was helping her to sit back up and pulling up the blankets for her.

"What was that? Did it cause this?" Rose gazed worriedly up at him.

"Just need to check something, I'll be back in a jiffy." And with that the Doctor left her bedroom as rapidly as he had arrived, leaving her alone with her paralyzed legs and worries.

He returned with an armload of equipment held haphazardly and as he came through the door, some of it fell, but it left it where it was and set down the remaining machines on her bed, digging through the pile to find something specific. He held aloft a small silver tube, maybe half the size of the sonic screwdriver.

"All right Rose. I think you got stung by one of the Tassadar Devils, they're kind of like flying scorpions and mosquitos put together. Did you notice anything biting you when you were on the planet?"

Rose shook her head. "No, but there was a lot of time when I was occupied dealing with other things and it could have attacked me." She reached a hand up to feel the back of her neck, but the Doctor gently caught it and placed it back in her lap.

"You shouldn't touch it. I'll check your blood, and if I'm right, the antitoxin will clear up all the problems in a few hours." The Doctor smiled and used the small silver tube to prick one of her fingers and deposited the blood into a small machine that glowed and whirred and the symbols that it produced weren't in a language that the TARDIS would translate for her.

The Doctor studied the symbols and played around with a similar looking silver tube before looking up at her and grinning. "It's all from the string. This antitoxin will reserve the paralysis and you'll be as good as new in a few hours."

He injected her with the tube and left with promises of snacks and drinks and something for them to do to pass the time while they waited for the medicine to take effect and reserve her pain and unmoving legs.

Rose was a little dejected that it hadn't worked immediately. Barring that, she had been expecting some kind of gradual tingling or feeling working its way up or down her legs. They still left gone, she poked at her thigh, pondering how terrible it would be if this was never reversed and she was left bedridden and paralysed for the rest of her life.

"Rose! I got tea, the way you like it, snacks from seven galaxies and enough fun to keep us busy if your legs take the next six years to unfreeze!" The Doctor swept the medical equipment off her bed and his gaze didn't linger long enough on her face for him to realise that his words really affected her.

She enjoyed the tea and the crackers that were an odd mix of curry and salt and chocolate, but good all the same. The movie they watched seemed interesting enough, but the Doctor refused to let the TARDIS translate it, he claimed it would ruin the poetry and beauty of the language. So he threw in a few comments that helped her follow the storyline, but it wasn't the same as watching something that she understood.

Two hours later and the Doctor was shovelling his gear into a bag and Rose was starting to feel uncomfortable, her tea was making itself known. She leaned forward and got out of bed. It wasn't until she had almost reached the end of the bed that she realised what she was doing.

The smile on her face was blazing and stretching her face so much it hurt. "YES! Doctor, it worked! I didn't notice anything at all! I was so worried and it worked, oh yes it worked!"

The Doctor caught her as her legs weakened and threatened to drop her on the floor. "Of course it worked, it just takes a while to kick in and then it kicks in all at once." He carefully sat her back on her bed. "It might take you a little while to get all your strength back though, so stick to short distances with stuff to grab on for now."

Rose nodded and stood again. "I'll be right back, just need a minute." And her legs held her up all the way to the bathroom.


	10. Jet Lag

**Title: **J is for Jetlag(10/26)

**Author: **Evelyn Carver

**Rating: **K

**Summary: **The Doctor is used to jumping all over planets and throughout time, but Rose needs some downtime.

**Length: **1 108

**Disclaimer: **Doctor Who & associated. does not belong to me.

_Note: This one's not so heavy on the H/C, it's hard to think of anything that starts with J. I'm also a little lost on K._

It truly was a beautiful sunset. The way that the light reflected off the water and off of the falls was magical. Rose turned to the Doctor, happy that nothing had gone wrong for once. Having a peaceful trip every now and then was good and relaxing.

"Doctor, the only thing that would make this better is if there was a chip shop somewhere." Rose declared, getting to her feet as the last rays of sunlight disappeared over the horizon.

The Doctor laughed quietly, "Rose Tyler, after my heart, you certainly know how to end an adventure. But the only way to appreciate Niagara Falls is to come here before humans had a chance to make their mark on the land. It's best this way." He got to his feet and helped her shake out the picnic blanket and fold it neatly away.

After he unlocked the TARDIS and they were making themselves at home in the console room, his stomach growled nosily. "I could go for some chips if you're still up for them." His hand hovered over the controls until Rose nodded.

"I'll be back in a minute; I'm just going to put this stuff away." Rose shouldered the picnic basket and gathered the blanket up in her arms before setting off into the TARDIS. By the time she got back to the console room, she had felt them enter and leave the vortex, hopefully close to a chip shop, spending the day hiking around Canada was exhausting.

The Doctor had put his coat on and was leaning on the door when she got back, hastily fixing her sweaty hair into a ponytail and hurrying across the room to stand by his side as he opened the door. "London, 2005, try to make sure that no one that knows you sees us. We are out of your area, but be careful."

It was shockingly sunny. The sun was almost directly overhead and the streets were full of people on their lunch breaks, moving quickly to make the most of the short time that they had off. The Doctor grinned at her and took her hand, looking both ways for a moment before setting off across the street.

"There should be a decent place selling chips right along here somewhere."

Rose wanted to buy food at the first place at they came across, the Doctor wasn't having any of it. They had walked past three places, none of which met with the Doctor's approval and her feet hurt and she was hungry and exhausted.

"Look Doctor, here's a pub. They sell chips and they're open. Let's get whatever they've got and go back the TARDIS." She tugged on his arm, pulling him towards the open door and the tantalizing smells that were wafting out.

He drew in a long sniff of the air and shook his head. "I really don't think that they've got a good recipe. Come on Rose, if the next place isn't any good we'll turn back and I'll pick one of the shops." He led her further down the road, grumbling about the state of chips in London these days.

By the time they'd walked to the next shop and then turned around to return they way that they'd had come, Rose was exhausted and her feet were aching. The chips that had sounded so delicious less than an hour ago were now sitting heavily in her stomach and she could almost feel the grease running through her veins.

She leaned against the wall of the TARDIS, taking some of the weight off her tired feet as the Doctor fished about for his key and opened the door, holding it for her to slide in before him. She made it up to the console but her feet protested and she sank to the ground to lean against that, looking at the jump seat with just a little bit of longing in her eyes.

The Doctor wiped his hands off on his shirt before touching the console and bringing the TARDIS to life with an array of chips and peeps. She listened as he moved the squeaky dial around and then the softer sounds of his feet on the floor grate and then looked up at him, willing her eyes to stay open.

The grin on his face seemed to speak for itself, so she didn't bother asking him if he was tired. But his next words certainly surprised her.

"So Rose, where to next? I'm thinking of the zero gravity Olympics gymnastics competition. The team from Trill does some very interesting things, you'd like it. And the things that they can do with sports in a hundred years is just amazing."

Rose wondered if he had managed to drink half a dozen energy drinks in the time he'd spent on the other side of the console. He had been up and dressed and working on the TARDIS long before she had pulled herself from her warm bed and put the kettle on for tea.

She grinned tiredly. "We could always do that tomorrow though, right? No rush when you can go anywhere in space and time whenever you want." She yawned not bothering to try and cover it, maybe he would understand how tired she was and finally take a break.

He didn't get it. The insane grin grew a little wider and he tossed an arm around her shoulders. "San Francisco, the Olympics in 2135, a team-"

"Doctor!" Rose pulled away from him. "Let's go tomorrow. I can't enjoy it fully now."

"Are you sick?" He leaned in closer to her face. "I think that we should-"

She cut him off again, "We've been doing things for days! I need a break now. Remember, I sleep and you do whatever you want in the TARDIS for a few hours? I promise I won't take too long. We can be on an adventure again in a couple hours."

The Doctor didn't look happy but she could see the ideas registering with him as he remembered that she was human and just how many hours had it been for them since they'd set off for prehistoric Canada.

"We'll take a short pit stop." He opened the door to the interior of the TARDIS for her. "Your bed awaits."

Rose stumbled over her tired feet through the TARDIS corridors and collapsed on her bed as soon as she found her room. She kicked her shoes off and pulled the blankets around herself, yawning into her pillow. With any luck the Doctor would get immersed in his work and leave her alone to get some sleep.


	11. Killed

**Title: **K Is for Killed

**Rating**: G/K

**Summary**: Rose wakes up in a strange place and the Doctor is acting really odd. If only she could remember what happened.

**Length**: 1,809

**Disclaimer: **Doctor Who & associated. does not belong to me.

**Note: **It's been a while! I'm still not happy with this story, but it wasn't getting any better.

There was light flickering in and out of the edges of her vision, the edges of it bending and twirling around her. It was pretty but it was making her feel dizzy. She closed her eyes, feeling warm and safe and snippets of memory in her mind told her that she had been cold, very cold what felt like a short time ago.

"Rose?" The Doctor's voice startled her, but the hand that he rested on her arm felt warm and she turned her head in his direction.

"Rose, are you here now? Are you awake?"

She took a deep breath and open her eyes again. The odd bending light was still there and it still hurt her head and her stomach, but she could make out the edges of the Doctor's face and the outline of his nose and his hair.

"Hi." Her throat burned as she spoke and the pounding in her head intensified from the effort it had taken to get the word out.

She heard the Doctor's sigh of relief and watch as his hand came close to her face and from the light bending looked like it was going to hit her until he moved up and stroked over her hair. "Oh Rose. What do you remember?"

Rose let her eyes slip closed again and enjoyed the Doctor's gentle stroking of her hair. She didn't really remember much. "I remember being cold and maybe wet, but nothing. What happened?"

She could hear the rush of the Doctor's breath as he sighed, but no words followed. His hand was quivering as it touched her head again and as his fingers pressed against her forehead, things seemed more distant and then slowly faded away to nothing.

She woke up quickly the next time, thoughts and feelings spilling into her mind and she blinked hard, clearing the gunk from her eyes and trying to shake the fuzziness from her mind. Slowly, but surely, she pushed herself into a sitting position and took stock of her surroundings as she supported herself with her shaky arms.

This wasn't the TARDIS sickbay as she had originally thought. The technology was wrong, it wasn't the eclectic mix that the Doctor was so proud of. It was all space-age materials and the pulsing and beeping of machines was very Spock. But the most surprising thing of all was that the Doctor hadn't appeared yet.

Rose pulled the slinky and shiny blanket off of her legs and swung them over the side of the bed. It was more a platform than a bed, attached to the wall at the head and on either side of her, a few feet from her platform, there was additional empty platforms. It was interesting, but she was starting to worry. Where was the Doctor?

The floor was smooth and cold, like tile but all one very large piece that lacked the cracks and patterns that the tile she was familiar with. She shuffled forward, taking small steps and dragging her feet along the floor until she had reached the next bed platform and she leaned against it to take a break.

A door on the opposite side of the room slide open with an odd squeaking sound and Rose dropped to her knees and slid back against the wall, pressed as close to the bed as she could get. She didn't know what was setting her off, but something felt wrong.

The door squeaked shut and the sounds of heavy boots filled the room. Rose tried to breathe silently and kept her eyes half closed, terrified at what she would see before her. And sure enough, her sudden fear was justified.

Half a dozen heavy set cats marched through the room, their noses raised high in the air as if seeking some scent. They carried large and cruel looking weapons of some kind in their arms and herded along in the centre of their formation were three human looking captives dressed in the same type of hospital style clothes and looking absolutely terrified.

She didn't know why they passed by her, but they did. Not a single one of them glanced in her direction or swung a nose towards her hiding place. She closed her eyes and counted her lucky stars. When the second door had squeaked open and closed, she got to her feet and walked back to her bed as fast as her legs would carry her.

The space-age blanket was wadded up at the foot of the bed platform and Rose wrapped it around her head like she had done as a child, playing dress up with sheets and curtains. She pulled it low over her face, hoping that it would hide her uncatlike creatures at first glance if those armed animals appeared again.

She stopped at the counter against the wall next to the door. Mostly to rest, but also to quickly scan the drawers and cabinets for anything that she could use to protect herself. Her hand had just settled on a rather large, heavy looking metal block when a sigh and a sudden touch on her shoulder spooked her, she whipped around and hit the Doctor hard on the side of his head.

His face fell for a moment and he reached a hand up to feel the spot that was already beginning to redden. "Ouch."

Rose's eyes widened and she dropped the block and threw her arms around the Doctor, burying her head in his chest and then letting him support her as he hugged her back.

Finally, he pulled away and looked at her, his face serious and more than a bit worried. "Are you all right Rose? I meant to be here when you woke up. Things, they just kept happening."

She nodded, tears starting to pool in her eyes. "What happened? And there were cats, but they weren't nurses, they had guns! And I hid and I'm so weak."

The Doctor nodded and took her hands in his. "I'll explain everything. But we haven't got a lot of time before my presence is missed and it is going to take time to get you back to the TARDIS." He glanced around the room and opened a few drawers before pulling out a tiny vial filled with a deep red liquid.

Rose shrank back as he broke the seal and the most foul smell filled the air. The Doctor seemed much less bothered by it and tipped the liquid into his palm before rubbing it all over his hands and then reaching out for hers.

"I don't want that on me. It's rank." Rose wrinkled her nose and put her hands behind her back.

"You saw the cats Rose. They have an excellent sense of smell and unfortunately quite a few of them have gotten a good whiff of this Time Lord. We're going to hide our scents, and it will wash off once we're back at the TARDIS, I promise."

Rose closed her eyes and let him rub the nasty oily stuff off his hands and onto hers. When he was done, she opened her eyes and he took her hand.

"We'll try to go slow at first, but it may get dicey near the end, get ready to run." He grinned at her and aimed the sonic screwdriver at the door, it opened without the squeaky sound she was expecting.

Their journey through the halls of the high tech hospital sped passed without incident. Rose focused on putting one foot in front of another at the breakneck speed the Doctor was setting, but he was pulling her around corners and ducking through other rooms, ever pausing for almost a full minute in some kind of storage closet.

At long last, Rose saw the familiar blue of the TARDIS in the hall ahead and breathed a sigh of relief. The Doctor grinned and slowed, sticking a hand down into a pocket to locate the key, he yanked it out and let her in before following closely and slamming the door behind him.

Rose collapsed on the floor, the run would have exhausted her on a normal day and she hadn't exactly been in the best shape to start off with. But the floor of the TARDIS felt nice and cool beneath her and the muted sounds of the Doctor working in the background soothed her until the memorable sound of the TARDIS moving kicked in.

"Is something wrong? Why did we have to leave in such a hurry?" Rose asked, rolling over and propping herself up on her elbows.

The Doctor's face was grim. "I'm taking you home. This is too dangerous, I thought it would work, but look at what happened. That can never happen again. Your mother would kill me."

Rose got to her feet and stumbled up to the console to lean against her friend. "What can never happen again? What happened? You keep avoiding every question! And I am not going home! Why did we have to leave? I'm not leaving!"

The Doctor grabbed her hands and Rose hoped that he would explain something, but instead he produced some type of wet wipe and cleaned the last of the smelly red paste from her hands. "Come with me."

He led her into the TARDIS and at first she thought he was taking her to pack her bags, but instead they entered the sickbay that they rarely used. She stood in the doorway, fear that the Doctor would actually take her home starting to fill her.

Rose remained in the doorway as the Doctor fitted the sonic screwdriver into some sort of external extension and ran it up and down her front before slipping the screwdriver, sans the extra bit back into his pocket.

She moved towards him once he had stopped moving and took his hands in hers. "Rose, you died. And I thought you were dead for good."

Her mouth dropped open. Of all the things that she had been expecting, that was not one of them. She tightened her grip on his hands. "Why? How did that happen?"

"Do you remember anything about the planet?" The Doctor asked, when Rose shook her head, he continued, "We were helping a small rebellion group and you were right up in the thick of it and, it was almost silly really. We were walking back to their campsite and you fell off the bridge. The water was near freezing and it took us a long time to get down to you and it took too long for us to fish you out."

"But I'm okay now." Rose smiled and pulled the Doctor into a hug.

"I thought you were dead Rose, and I could never live with that." He buried his face in her hair and whispered something that she couldn't quite make out.


	12. Living

**Title: **L is for Living

**Rating**: G/K

**Summary: **Part 2 of K is Killed, Rose finally gets some answers about what happened to her before.

**Length: **2,853 words

**Disclaimer: **Doctor Who & associated. does not belong to me.

**Author's Note: **Not really any hurt/comfort in this chapter. Thanks to Scholar of Imagination for the L is for Living idea. And M is for Malaria will feature a special guest.

Rose was sitting on a settee in the library, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and her knees tucked up to her chest. She was warm and comfortable and happy and ready to put the events of the previous few days far behind her.

The Doctor opened the door by asking the TARDIS to do it for him. His arms were laden with various treats and hot drinks and there was another blanket wrapped around his shoulders. As he approached Rose, he shuffled his feet a bit, making sure that he wasn't going to surprise her.

She smiled and accepted a mug full of tea and a larger travel mug filled with hot cocoa and helped the Doctor set down the rest of his supplies without dropping them onto the library floor or mashing them into the blanket he had slid off onto his seat.

"Thanks." Rose mumbled into her mug of hot chocolate. The Doctor always had the best hot chocolate, probably because it came from some other planet where all did was grown cocoa and supply the universe with chocolate.

Then she waited and they spent thirty minutes in companionable silence, broken only by the munching of crisps and shortbread and the rest of the snacks the Doctor had brought. As their eating was beginning to dwindle down, Rose took a deep breath and asked the Doctor the question that she had been waiting to have answered since she had woken up several days ago.

"So, can you explain, properly this time, what happened? I'm all right Doctor and I really want to know." Rose snuggled up to the Time Lord's side, "I know that it wasn't your fault that I got hurt and we got separated. And we don't have to tell my mum."

The Doctor pressed his lips together tightly and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. She could feel his fingers quivering against her side.

"Please Doctor. I trust you, and I want to know what happened."

The Time Lord took a shaky breath. "It was awful Rose. If you had really died, if you hadn't come back, what would I have told your mother? What would I have done?"

"But that's past now." Rose held his hand tightly. "Just tell me what happened."

The Doctor shook his head and let a tiny smile creep onto his face, "I suppose you won't leave me alone until I tell you?"

Rose grinned. "Of course I won't. "

"Very well then, it all started a week ago, after we set down on the planet Loxodon."

The Doctor grinned and waved his arms about. "Here it is Rose, Loxodon, the home of the cat people and the best fish in the universe!"

Rose looked around. The entire planet seemed rather damp and cold and a rather nasty fishy smell filled the air even though there was no bodies of water or other creatures in sight. The sky was clouded over and the path that the Doctor had landed the TARDIS next to was completely deserted.

The Doctor sniffed the air, Rose couldn't imagine that he was smelling anything besides the overwhelming fishiness. But a moment later he pointed down the path. "There is something interesting going on over there. I can hear talking and some new sounds." He grinned at her. "Let's check it out."

So Rose sighed and resigned herself to a few fishy hours. At least the TARDIS found have a hot shower and some nice bath gels waiting for when she returned. She hurried to catch up with the Doctor and fell in beside him as they continued down the path.

About twenty minutes later, the trees began to thin out a bit and Rose had adjusted to the smell of fish and it no longer overwhelmed her. And she could hear the undercurrent of noise that the Doctor had mentioned earlier.

None of that prepared her for the events in the clearing. A large number of the cat people, that despite being the same species looked nothing like the nun cats on New Earth, were fighting each other. She saw several blaster type weapons and a few knives flashing in the light, but there were cats fighting with their natural teeth and claws too.

The Doctor clapped a hand to his forehead. "We're on the wrong side of the planet. Of the five main continents, three are underwater, the one at covers most of the planet is a heavily industrialized space faring nation, and the last continent, the one at the very top of the planet is filled with a more slowly developing branch of the species. We must be in the wrong area. This is one of the Eastern government's incursions and the locals are fighting back."

Rose took a closer look at the fighting cats. Sure enough, there was one side that was clearly working as a team. They all wore dark blue and green uniforms and they were the ones fighting with mostly the blasters and stun guns and a few of them had knives out. The rest of the feline people seemed to be wearing bits and pieces of animal skins and some primitive type cloth. But despite being armed with nothing but their bodies, they were holding their own against the invaders.

"Come on Rose, if there are wild folk here, they are bound to have a camp nearby. Want to see if we can find some of their children?"

Rose frowned, "Why would we want to do that?"

The Doctor looked at her incredulously, "Have you ever seen a kitten? What about a walking and talking kitten?"

She smiled and nodded and followed him in a roundabout path around the two warring teams.

The indigenous tribe, a group called the Tarrus were happy to have them. Apparently they had a local legend about a healer that changed his face and the tribe's alpha couple welcomed them to the camp, mostly for the Doctor's medical skills, but they soon came to appreciate Rose and she them.

Rose spent a day watching their children while the Doctor talked strategy with the pack's elders, and the Doctor had been right. The cat children were a lot like kittens only a little better in some ways and a little worse in others. For one they were a lot more fun than any children that she had ever met on Earth, but she had also never planned on seeing the cat people wash themselves with their tongues as meticulously as Earth housecats did.

She met up with the Doctor again that night. He seemed rather pleased with himself again and took her to the small den that one of the warriors had temporarily vacated to give them some space to themselves.

"Rose, this is going brilliantly!" The Doctor said, as he passed her a bundle of leaves that smelled strongly of fish. "I've got everything worked out. With the TARDIS and a few other pieces that they were able to supply, we're going to put up a force field with a few hidden doors. It'll keep them safe from opportunistic leaders on the other continents and the hidden doors will prevent them from being trapped here permanently!"

Rose glanced down at the bundle of leaves in her hands. The Doctor had opened his up and had been placing small bits of whatever was in there into his mouth as he'd been talking, but she wasn't so sure. It smelled very fishy, like the way a dead fish smells on the beach when it's stinking up the entire seaside.

The Doctor frowned at her for a moment. "Aren't you hungry? Immerse yourself in the culture Rose, eat what they eat!" He reached a hand out and opened up the wrappings in her hand. The stuff looked like a cross between the sushi that you could get at one of those places were everything was in Japanese, from the labels on the food to the price stickers on the shelves, and the canned cat food that had been sitting a can for so long that it looked more like sicked up cat food than fresh stuff.

Rose picked up a small piece of it between two fingers. It was fish all right. But somehow when the Doctor had claimed that Loxodon had the best fish in the universe she had been imaging cooked fish, made over a fire or a grill, but not a half paste raw fish that she had to eat with her fingers.

"Just try it." The Doctor took another big bite of his fishy dinner.

Rose took a deep breath and put the small piece she'd selected into her mouth. "It's not bad." She said, before wrapping it all back up in the leaves. "Still, when are we going back to the TARDIS?" She looked at the Doctor beseechingly.

He just laughed and then dug around in one of his pockets before producing a protein bar of some kind. "Here, this is," He glanced down at the package, "Wasabi and mint flavoured. I'll trade you for the rest of your fish." He offered out the flashy package and Rose readily agreed.

The protein bar wasn't bad. A little on the spicy side, but she could deal with that. It got the fishy taste out of her mouth and the mint reminded her pleasantly of candies and toothpaste.

The Doctor finished off his own fish and hers before leaning back into the damp grass that covered the bottom of the den.

"I figure we'll probably head back to the TARDIS tomorrow. I'm going out to set up the force field in the morning, we could use your help actually, and then we'll have a little meeting with the invasion force and then we'll come back to the village, say our goodbyes and head on to somewhere else. Any preference?"

Rose shrugged. "I'm sure you'll pick someplace nice." She looked around the tiny and damp den. "Maybe somewhere with nice beds, with soft mattresses and warm blankets." She laid down on the ground next to him, using her arms to pillow her head against the cold wet ground.

The Doctor laughed and curled closer to her, she could feel his temperature quickly rising as he kept her warm on the cold planet. "In a few hours you can have my coat as a blanket." He put a warm arm over her and held her close, sharing his now warm body heat.

But she was restless the entire night. Even after the Doctor wrapped her in his coat and left her curled up, the ground kept poking her and then she started to cough and every time that she breathed in, the fishy smell coated her throat and lungs and they burned as she tried to get some sleep.

Finally, the Doctor returned and took his coat back with a broad smile on his face. "All right Rose, want to come with me and the warriors? The force field is ready to be turned on and we're about to meet with the invasion force leaders."

Rose followed him out of the den, stretching happily in the predawn mix of almost light but still mostly dark as a group of cat warriors assembled around them, doing their own stretches and pulling on bits of stiff animal hide and strapping knives made of stone and bone to their hips and trimming back the hair around their eyes so that it wouldn't impede their vision.

Then, when the sun was just starting to come over the tops of the evergreens, the group set out. The warriors moved quickly through their native territory and Rose and the Doctor were left taking up the rear of the group.

"It's better this way." The Doctor told her in hushed tones. "They're starting to take responsibility for themselves and keep invaders out of their lands."

The group crossed a bridge that invaders had built years ago on yet another one of the incursions to the northern continent. Rose glanced over the steep edges, there were no guard rails or anything, but she figured that the cats probably didn't need them if they were anything like the felines on Earth.

They kept walking to the appointed meeting place where they had to hang back in the trees and watch as the warriors had an abrupt, but peaceful talk with invading forces leaders. The TARDIS was still translating for Rose and both sides were rather polite for groups that had been involved in a bloody battle against each other just a few days earlier.

"We are willing to do business with you in the future." The head warrior of the tribe announced. "You must present it to us fairly and give us things that we need in exchange for the things that you need." The head warrior then handed over a bundle of papers that the Doctor had helped the tribe leaders prepare.

A quick discussion between the two leaders quickly followed and soon the leader of the invasion force was taking off her uniform top and giving it to the head warrior in exchange for a beaded pouch that he was wearing around his waist. He removed several of the leaf packages of food first and then handed it over with a smile.

The Doctor grinned. "It's much colder in the northern continent," He told Rose, "But it is difficult for them to make clothing and the other continent discovered weaving machines and textiles quite a while ago, but they don't have all of the natural resources that are left up here."

Finally the tribe stood on one side of a small post that looked like it had been freshly built, it probably had been, Rose reflected. This force field thing was totally new. The invasion force backed away as the warrior fiddled with some wires for a moment and after a few seconds there was a loud crackling noise and she could see the force field static into place, shimmer for a minute and then it was totally invisible to her eyes.

"That's it?" She asked, glancing at the Doctor, it didn't look very much like a force field. Where were the swirling colours and the ominous electric sounds?

The Doctor nodded. "Yep, we'll go back to the village, it is on our way back to the TARDIS anyways and I wouldn't mind a little more of that fish."

The warriors slowed their pace on the way back and Rose was easily able to keep up with them. The Doctor lingered towards the back, admiring the wild vegetation properly now that the sun had fully risen.

They came close to the bridge again and Rose could hear the rumbling of water. As they started to cross over the bridge, she moved carefully to the side, not wanting to fall over from the lack of hand rails.

But she must have stepped too close. The loud white water was quite a ways down, but as she craned her neck to see it better, the wind picked up and she teetered on the edge for a moment before turning back to see what the Doctor was looking at now. She must have misjudged her turn she thought, as she felt her ankle quiver and then she was falling backwards and the roaring of the river seemed to be all around her.

"Is that good enough?" The Doctor asked.

Rose could feel his arm shaking where it was wrapped around her and she could her the pounding of his hearts under the ear that she was resting on his chest. She did want to know a little bit more, but most of it she could extrapolate from what he'd told her. And she didn't think that he was up to telling her much more.

"What happened next?" She asked, hoping that she could ferret out a few more details.

The Doctor sighed. "I fished you out of the river, the invasion force crossed the force field by flying over it. It turns out that they had an outpost that hadn't had time to evacuate before the force field had been turned on. They found us wandering about and you were taken prisoner while I managed to hide."

He took a deep breath. "It's lucky that they captured you. You needed their advanced technology, the TARDIS would have been fine, but we were still about two hours walk away and they saved your life."

Rose pulled away from the Doctor a little, so that she could look at his face. "Thank you. I really did want to know what happened."

The Doctor smiled, a bit sadly this time, at her. "It's all done now. Will you please let me stop talking about it?"

She nodded.

"And stop bringing it up all the time too?" The Doctor asked.

"Sure." Rose said. "We need a new adventure. Weren't you going to pick someplace with nice beds and I wouldn't mind a hot tub either." She smiled and the Doctor laughed happily. Everything was as it should be again.


End file.
